Inglorious Bosh'tets
by 500 Metric Tonnes of Palladium
Summary: What was Tali'Zorah doing during the two years after Shepard's death? Discovering that the universe hates her, apparently.
1. Ship of Fools  Crew of Idiots

Chapter 1 – Ship of Fools/Crew of Idiots

* * *

"Do you think there was any chance he survived the explosion?"

Prazza waved his hand, a gesture he always did whenever dismissing someone's opinion. More often than not he did this even when he had no idea what he was talking about, and this time was no exception.

"Of course Shepard did not survive! His body was probably ripped to pieces. Very small, very bite-sized pieces."

"But suppose he wasn't," said Vrael. "Suppose he was somehow thrown clear of the blast?"

"Then he would suffocate in the vacuum. Or maybe he was caught in the planet's gravity, and if that happened, the heat of re-entry would have incinerated him. And before you ask if he might have somehow survived _that,_ then the speed of impact with the planet's surface would have splattered his remains across many kilometres. It would be like throwing an egg against a wall really, really hard, and watching the gooey bits fly everywhere, and then your mother comes in and scolds you for playing with your food, and you beg her not to chain you to wall this time and...wait, what we were talking about again?"

Tali wished she could tell those to two to drop their conversation, but doing so would only get her into an argument, and she was in no mood to argue with those dolts. Didn't they understand that barely two months had passed since Shepard's death and the _Normandy's_ destruction? Couldn't they see that any mention of it still stung her deeply? Maybe they did not realise how insensitive they were being. There was a human saying, that one should never ascribe to malice what could be better explained by stupidity, and amongst the stupid Prazza had few equals. It was far more than ordinary stupidity, which was merely ignorance. No, Prazza was _aggressively stupid_; he did not just fall into the all-consuming black hole of stupidity, he made a running jump and hurled himself headlong in the void all the while screaming _"WAAAGH!" _His friend Vrael, in full Vrael'Grashnahk vas Rassgat (reputed to the the ugliest-sounding name in the flotilla, enough to frighten elderly ladies and small children), was an argumentative, arrogant individual who was exceedingly provincial in his thinking. Vrael was aghast when he had heard that Tali was serving about an Alliance vessel, believing that she was being enticed to abandon her people and worse, was also being seduced by the human commander.

The latter, of course, was not entirely untrue.

At once the mental barriers went up. Thinking of Shepard would only bring her grief and remind her of certain feelings, feelings that were better off buried and never given any consideration. Instead Tali focused on her present task – integrating the new mineral scanner, or more precisely the Arcturus Geoscience Inc. Perkele5000 Mineral Surveyor, into their ship's systems. Unlike most hardware on quarian vessels, this particular device had been purchased new from a human trading vessel, and Tali still had the original brochure which promised, among other things, to "make mineral scanning fun for the whole family!" It described at length how the Perkele5000 could scan a planet's surface for element zero, platinum, palladium, iridium, unobtanium, and nonsensium, and could do so at a far greater rate than any competing mineral scanner. Of course, the benefits of these features was belied by the lengthy warnings written along one side of the device: _Warning: The Perkele5000 Mineral Surveyor emits high levels of ionising radiation during scanning. Do not aim towards face or genitals. Do not operate while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Please ensure that mineral rights have been obtained before commencing extraction operations. Arcturus Geoscience Inc. takes no responsibility for any uprisings in native populations do to inconsiderate mineral extraction._ Below this, the words _MADE IN FINLAND_ were etched into the metal.

The challenge was getting the mineral scanner to work with their ship's systems, which would have been antiquated fifty years ago. The ship was named the _Maldon –_ a human-built vessel purchased for next to nothing from a somewhat less-than-scrupulous reseller on the Citadel. It was small, consisting only of two decks. The upper deck was where the ship's pilot – Vrael in their case - steered the vessel, and the lower deck held the engine room, crew bunks, and a meagre storage space. When it was purchased the _Maldon_ was barely spaceworthy, let alone able to power up its engine, buts the quarians were well-known for their ability to turn worthless junk into something usable, and so within a week the ship was up and running.

Normally, Tali would have been down in engineering, a place she considered her natural home, but the admiralty board had made the rather unusual decision of putting her in charge of the mission. Their objective was simple: travel to an as-of-yet unnamed blue hypergiant star somewhere in the Shrike Abyssal and scan the system for any minerals that the flotilla could use. In Tali's mind, this was a thoroughly unnecessary and dangerous assignment, as hypergiant stars emitted a staggering amount of radiation that would incinerate anyone foolish to enough to come too near them. Were their truly no other viable systems for mining in the flotilla's flight path? The Migrant Fleet was truly in a bad way if they had to resort to mineral extraction in such hazardous systems.

Occupying her familiar position in the engine room were two men, and although Tali was not very well acquainted with them, she knew enough to know that she would not be getting along very well with them. The chief engineer was named Juodaan'Viinaa vas Lumikko, a violent, drunken sot who, according to rumour, had secretly installed a device into his suit that pumped alcohol directly into his bloodstream. The other man was Juodaan's "understudy," named Skaal'Gard vas Vrija, was scarcely any better. While Juodaan was usually violent and wrathful, Skaal was the most miserable, despondent individual Tali had ever encountered; the sort of man who acted as if living were the most insufferable burden imaginable. It was widely rumoured that, instead of going on his Pilgrimage, he had actually hidden himself away in the ductwork of his ship for a few weeks and cobbled together his "gift" from various parts he had salvaged there. No one could actually prove this, of course, but the rumour refused to die.

Why had the admiralty saddled her with such an incompetent crew? At first she wanted to think it was some sort of test – that if she could accomplish her mission in spite of her crew it would mean she was worthy of being considered a leader. Then Tali began to wonder if this were not some insidious plot to get rid of her. She quickly dismissed that notion, certain the admiralty board bore her no ill will. Besides, this was a simple mineral prospecting mission; even if her teammates were all gibbering idiots, how many ways were there for things to go wrong? It would still be an unpleasant couple of weeks, however, and her plan was to spend as little time dealing with her crew as possible. That would prove difficult, due to the small size of their ship and the fact that she was in command.

In a few minutes Tali was finished integrating the mineral scanner into their ship's systems. Rather than engaging in conversation with her crew, which would lead nowhere pleasant, she decided to retreat to the captain's quarters, which were more accurately called the captain's cubbyhole. Unfortunately Prazza and Vrael were already in her face, wanting to include her in their horrid conversation.

"So what do you think, Tali'Zorah?" Prazza asked in his usual condescending tone. "Do you think Shepard was blown to bits in the explosion, incinerated during re-entry, or plastered all over the planet's surface?"

She had to resist the urge to strike him. Tali had never told anyone in the flotilla about her feelings towards Shepard; why would she? For one of her kind to be involved romantically with a non-quarian was anything but traditional; to her knowledge, no one in the Migrant Fleet had ever had such a relationship with an outsider, and she knew that anyone who did would be looked upon with suspicion at best and revulsion at worst. Not that any of this mattered now. Shepard was gone and now she had four bumbling crewmen to deal with, two of whom were now making her very, very angry.

"Shepard died a hero," she said, clenching her fists. "And you're _mocking_ him?"

Prazza was not bothered by her indignation in the slightest. "Come on, we're just having some fun. It's not like he's around to hear us."

_But if he could, he'd probably throw you out the nearest airlock,_ she thought. "Imagine you lost a friend, Prazza. How would you like it if I were asking these kinds of questions about him?"

Vrael turned away. "You're wasting your time, Prazza. She's still mourning the loss of that human captain. Can't imagine why. Their kind and every other race have nothing but contempt for us. I'm surprised the human captain even tolerated Tali'Zorah's presence on his ship."

That was a blatant lie – Shepard never once treated her as if she were anything but a valued member of the _Normandy's_ crew – but there was little point in arguing with Vrael. Tali might have been the one in charge of their mission, yet that certainly didn't mean her crew respected her leadership. She knew she wasn't ready for this kind of role, so why had they given it to her? Was it because she was an admiral's daughter? Being honest with herself, Tali had no desire to follow in her father's footsteps. She'd seen so much of the wrangling and infighting that went on amongst the admirals that the position of admiral held little appeal to her, and in her heart she knew that she could do more for her people by going out in the galaxy than by taking part in political intrigue and power-play.

They were still a day away from their destination, provided that the _Maldon_ did not suffer some sort of catastrophic breakdown, which was a very real possibility. Maybe it had been a good ship in its day, but now Tali had about as much trust in it as she did in the kindness and compassion of a vorcha. It was no _Normandy,_ that was certain...not that many ships could compare favourably against the _Normandy. _Losing Shepard was painful, yet losing that ship had hurt her in a different way. There was just something indescribably horrific about seeing such a beautiful piece of engineering ripped to pieces as if it were nothing. The vast majority of ships in the Migrant Fleet were utilitarian in design and - if she dared to say it - rather ugly. The _Normandy_, on the other hand, was sleek and modern, with every part of it showing the dedication and skill of its designers. Seeing it destroyed was like seeing the life's work of a gifted artist dashed to bits before his eyes.

On the _Normandy,_ it had taken her a while to get used to how quiet it ran. Now that she was on the _Maldon,_ she was having trouble getting accustomed to how rough and noisy it was. Just from listening to the sound of the engines Tali could tell that the injector in the port fusion torch was out of alignment by several microns and that the plasma manifold was in need of a good scrubbing. Those were hardly the only issues. The ship's VI firmware was several years out of date and the engine control software needed to be updated as well, as a critical bug had been discovered in the software that, on rare occasions, would cause a vessel's drive core to explode with the force of around fifty kilotons. Fixing these problems would be child's play for her if the _Maldon_ were in dock, yet there was nothing she could do about now. That was a pity, because ship repairs would have taken her mind off Shepard.

Absorbing herself in her work might have kept Tali from thinking about him during her waking hours, there was no escape in her dreams. Sometimes she would dream that Shepard hadn't really died in the attack, but rather had boarded the Collector vessel and killed them all using only a knife. Then she would awake, and her heart would be crushed by the sudden realisation that none of it was real. As time went on the dreams became more intense, eventually culminating in a dream in which she and Shepard were married in the Citadel Presidium. It was wonderful, at least until a krogan crashed the ceremony and ate one of the guests. Even in her dreams nothing went right. And that was saying nothing about her other recurring dream, which involved being pursued through a ship made entirely of cardboard and cheese by blunderbuss-wielding platypuses who constantly extolled the virtues of Objectivism.

In the end, Tali was only fooling herself about Shepard. She knew how humans showed affection to one another, as it was no different from how her people did before they driven off their homeworld. Now that they were trapped inside these suits it was difficult for even two quarians to be close to one another, and it would be even more so for a member of another species. Shepard would never feel anything for someone whose face and body were always hidden, but even if Tali could live outside her suit, didn't most people prefer their own species when it came to that sort of thing? And by some chance they didn't, would they ever desire one of the quarians, of all people, when they were among the most despised and distrusted species in the galaxy? No, of course they wouldn't. It was pointless to ruminate on dreams that would never come true. Far better to put her mind towards completing their mission, as mundane as it was. That was something that _could_ come true.


	2. Tali'Zorah, Destroyer of Worlds

Chapter 2 – Tali'Zorah, Destroyer of Worlds

* * *

The unnamed blue hypergiant was so luminous that, even many light years away, it still easily outshone any other star. A star of this size put out an incredible amount of energy, and the nuclear reactions within its core were so energetic that they often overwhelmed the star's own gravity, resulting in a very high rate of mass loss that manifested itself as a swirling, glowing nebula around the star. These sort of stars had short lifetimes; only a few million years at the most, after which they exploded in a spectacular hypernova, an event which was one of the rarest and most energetic events in the universe. No one had ever seen one in person, and anyone who did probably wouldn't survive anyway.

None of that did anything to assuage Tali's anxiety as the _Maldon_ entered the system. There was something intensely unnerving about flying around a star that might suddenly explode, even if all the prior scans had shown that the star still had plenty time left before going supernova. Maybe she would feel better were she not in the company of four other quarians who were not the sharpest of people at the best of times. She chided herself for thinking that, hoping in the depths of her heart that her shipmates would excel when crunch time came.

That illusion came crashing down when she came across Juodaan, who was stumbling through the _Maldon's_ upper deck, clearly inebriated. "Well, if...if it isn't Tali'Zorah," he said, slurring his words so badly it was as if it took every ounce of his cognitive faculties just to speak. "The darling of the admiralty board! Why...why does everyone like you, anyway? No one ever likes me. All I do is tweak the engines. Tweak tweak tweak. Why can't the engines tweak me for once? Heh. _Tweaking._"

Tali crossed her arms. "You are not fit for duty, Juodaan. Go back to your quarters until you're sober."

Vrael, who was just out of sight, immediately came to Juodaan's defence. "Now Tali, there's no need to slander the good crewman. Just because you say something doesn't make it so. I can personally vouch for Juodaan's capabilities."

Then she heard the unmistakably dreary voice of Skaal'Gard. "Oh why do you even bother?" he said, emerging from one of the maintenance alcoves. "I can't blame Juodaan for what he does. Everyone needs their vices to stave off the crushing realisation of the utter futility of life. Here I am, a brilliant quarian engineer, and I'm stuck fixing this blasted VI. I could have been a captain, or even an admiral. But the universe has it in for me, I'm afraid. There's nothing much to hope for when you're standing naked in front of the howling void of despair."

"What's wrong with the VI now?" she asked.

Skaal sighed. "It hates me."

One advantage of being in these suits, she thought, was that no one could see you rolling your eyes. "Skaal, it's a VI, not an AI. It doesn't have feelings."

"Oh, but it does! I can hear the contempt in its voice. It talks about me behind my back and spreads all these nasty rumours about me. It's making me feel very depressed."

"I see," she said, not really caring. "Shouldn't you be in the engine room, Skaal? Juodaan's drunk, and I don't want him anywhere near the engines until he sobers up." _Or even then,_ she thought.

He sighed again. "Perhaps, but it's so _depressing_ down there. Listening to the droning noise of the engines and thinking of all the millions of ways my boundless talent could be better used just puts me in a bad mood, as if things could not possibly become even more miserable. To think I once led a squad of marines to take down a geth ship..."

Vrael groaned. "Not _this_ story again..."

"My whole squad was killed just minutes after we boarded. The geth had me surrounded, and with a suit puncture I wasn't in any shape to fight. So I tried talking with them, explaining the sheer futility of life and how horrible it must to be live as an automaton, cursed to do nothing except the same mindless, repetitive tasks for the entirety of their dreary existence. I must have talked with them for hours."

"So what happened?" said Tali.

"They killed themselves."

With that Skaal disappeared below deck along with Juodaan, leaving her alone for the moment. She sat herself in the pilot's chair, which was patched together with so much tape that there was now more tape than actual fabric, and brought up the navigation display. They were now well within the emission nebula surrounding the star, made up of all the material the star had blown off during its lifetime. There was not much to see at this distance; nebulae only appeared spectacular when viewed from a distance. Nor would they find much of interest on the planets aside from minerals, as the star's enormous energy output meant that any world in this system, even one a hundred AUs from its sun, would be far too hot for any form of life to develop.

She steered the _Maldon_ towards the outermost planet in the system – a small, rocky world orbiting at nearly 200 AU from the star. According to their scans, there were eight planets in this system, two of which were gas giants with numerous moons. Tali was annoyed by that, as they would have to scan every one of the moons for minerals, which would add a few more days to their mission. She chided herself for her irritation, knowing how important their task was to the flotilla, but scanning for minerals just felt so insignificant compared to stopping Saren and the geth. That was nonsense of course, given how dangerous that time had been, but a part of her longed for the excitement and exhilaration of saving the galaxy. Everything else was mundane by comparison.

Nearly a half hour passed and no one from her crew had come to the upper deck. Unfortunately her blissful time to herself quickly came to an end with a loud _crash_ from somewhere behind her, followed by a stream of foul language.

Tali stood up and went to investigate the disturbance. Just behind the cockpit was a room with a large table in the middle where the crew could discuss matters of importance, but now Prazza and Vrael were standing atop the table and attempting to clobber one another with the chairs they had apparently ripped from their mountings.

"What is going on here?" she cried, right as Vrael brought down his chair atop Prazza's head, causing him to stagger backward and fall to the floor.

"I'm sorry, Tali'Zorah. Prazza and I were just having a discussion on the merits of those old _Chiktikka vas Paus_ vids. I insisted that they were little more than puerile children's entertainment, but he seems to think they're the cultural peak of our civilisation."

Prazza quickly scrambled to his feet. "You take that back, you _bosh'tet!_ Come here and take what's coming to you! _Waaagh!"_

He then charged at Vrael and swung his fist at his head, apparently forgetting the fact that all quarians wore helmets. Vrael was unharmed, and Prazza was left cursing in pain after his hand struck the hard polycarbonate of Vrael's mask.

"Truly Prazza, you are a consummate idiot," said Vrael, giving a smug laugh. Tali felt somewhat ashamed; she too had enjoyed those vids during her childhood, and knowing that Prazza felt the same way lessened her memory of them in a way.

"Stop this at once, both of you!" she said, coming back to her senses. "_Keelah,_ it's like dealing with very small children..."

She was certain now that this mission _had_ to be some sort of test devised by the admiralty board. "Give her the worst the fleet has to offer," she imagined them saying, "and if she can whip them into shape, we'll know she's worthy of command." Unfortunately it seemed as if the part of about whipping them into shape might literally come true at some point if they kept acting the way they were.

Vrael and Prazza stormed off, still bickering with one another. Tali wondered what Shepard would do with those two. _Probably throw them out the airlock,_ she thought. _Or give them some speech that would turn them into model crewmen._ Unfortunately she had no ability to make grand speeches, and the admiralty board would not look to favourably upon her spacing members of her crew.

A few minutes later they were near enough to the outermost planet in the system that it could be seen through the cockpit glass. It was little more than a barren, grey rock bathed in enough radiation from its sun that there was no chance of finding any life there. Even if there were planets further out, in the star's habitable zone, the lifespan of hypergiant stars was simply too short for life to develop.

The Perkele5000 mineral scanner required no input other than a target planet, and then it would automatically record the latitude and longitude of any significant deposits into the ship's database. When the entire system had been surveyed, they would return to the flotilla and, with any luck, Tali would have nothing more to do with these four crewmen. The assignment was almost childish in its simplicity; she almost wished that they did not have this mineral scanner with them, as then they would have to survey mineral deposits on foot, which would be marginally more interesting than doing it from orbit.

With the ship on autopilot and the mineral scanner doing its thing, there was no need for her to remain in the cockpit, so Tali retired to the captain's quarters, her one sanctuary on the _Maldon._ Like the rest of the ship it was rather unclean (although living a quarian ship one quickly grew used to that) and one of the bulkheads at the foot of the bunk had a large dent in it, the story behind it being something she would rather not speculate on. There was a small desk where she kept her private terminal, and beside the desk was a locked cabinet containing her personal arms (Tali had learned early on that travelling unarmed through the galaxy was the height of folly). In particular, it held two weapons: her sidearm, the G64 Disemboweler pistol, and preferred weapon, the M65 Necrobutcher shotgun, which peppered enemies with small, spinning, high-velocity sawblades. There was really no need to keep these weapons locked up, but doing so was a wise precaution given the sort of people she had on board.

Aside from that the captain's quarters were bare, which was typical. Most quarians had few personal possessions; those who hoarded things were greatly looked down upon for being selfish. Few of them had the wherewithal to acquire much, at any rate. The Migrant Fleet exported almost nothing to the rest of the galaxy and had no real economy (at least not in the way other races would conceive) to speak of.

At present, the _Maldon _was on autopilot. She had programmed it to fly to all the planets and moons in the system and record the locations of all valuable minerals, freeing her from the rather tedious task of piloting the ship herself. With her free time Tali connected her private terminal the extranet and began reading through various news feeds. Ever since Shepard's death she had read the galactic news religiously, hoping that something – _anything –_ would show that he had not died in vain. But the Council had backslid on the Reaper threat, creating the impression that anyone who believed in the Reapers was an utter crank and on the same level as people who believed that the galaxy rested atop a giant turtle flying through space, or that the universe was ruled by an all-powerful and invisible pink unicorn.

Finding nothing of interest on the news, Tali switched to another secret pastime of hers: reading up on Earth's history and culture. During her time with Shepard she had never really asked him much about humans or their homeworld, something she had always regretted. That was part of the reason for her curiosity, the other being the rather mixed reputation humans had among other races. Many respected them for saving the Citadel and the Council, while others feared and resented them for having gained so much influence so quickly while other races had been waiting centuries to achieve what humanity had achieved in only a few decades. Many blamed it all on the Council's favouritism, but Tali suspected that there was more to it than that. One of the more surprising things she had learned was that humanity, at least on their homeworld, was far from being culturally homogeneous, with different nations having significantly different values and beliefs. There was no dominant religion, and nothings she had read indicated that Earth had ever had one. Maybe it was this diversity that was humanity's greatest strength. Of course, it was entirely possible that she was completely in the wrong, and that everyone the other races said about humans – that they were violent, selfish upstarts – was true. Tali had little personal experience in the matter, but all the humans she had met had treated her far better than other races typically treated quarians.

What Tali didn't know was that while she was browsing the extranet Prazza had gone up to the cockpit and was now puzzling over the Perkele5000 mineral scanner. Being curious in the worst sort of way, he looked at the scanner's readouts and though to himself, _I wonder what would happen if I tried scanning the star?_ He knew, even with his limited intellect, that there were no retrievable minerals to be found within stars, but Prazza was the sort of man who, as a child, would keep sticking his fingers into electrical outlets no matter how many times he got shocked and, if the quarians still had a homeworld, would gladly lick a flagpole in the middle of the winter just to see what would happen. He was able to resist his curiosity for a while, but a few minutes later it got the best of him, so he took direct control of the mineral scanner and aimed it the hypergiant star. The scanner spat out a bunch of readings Prazza didn't understand, and he was about to set the scanner back to its automatic setting when the ship's computer began shrieking. Prior to leaving the cockpit Tali had set the ship's VI to alert her if anything bad happened, and it was safe to say that what was happening now was the very _worst_ thing that could happen.

_"Warning! Warning!"_ said the VI. _"Pair production in stellar core increasing. Core thermal pressure falling."_

In an instant Tali was in the cockpit, and when she saw Prazza seated at the controls of the mineral scanner she knew at once that he was responsible. "_What did you do?" _she cried.

Prazza panicked. "Nothing! I just, I..."

Vrael and Skaal rushed into the cockpit, each one roused from idleness by the wailing alarms. Tali looked at the readouts for the ship's scanners as the VI announced further warnings. "_Warning! Pair-instability supernova imminent. Probability of survival at this distance zero percent. Recommend immediate departure from this area."_

Tali was no expert on stellar physics, but the word "supernova" told her all she needed to know. Any second now runaway thermonuclear reactions within the star's core would blow it apart in one of the most energetic events in the universe, releasing more energy in a few seconds than most stars gave off during their entire lifetime. This was no comfort at all to Tali, who had gone into the mission with the hope that nothing would blow up in her face, either literally or figuratively.

No sooner had seated herself at the ship's helm then the hypergiant star exploded. She did not realise it at that time, but she was the first sapient being in the galaxy to witness a supernova at so close a distance. This thought would have been no comfort to her anyway, as their ship would soon be destroyed in every way it was possible to be destroyed (and even in some that weren't). The star appeared to double, triple, then quadruple in size, becoming an enormous mass of superheated matter spreading outwards in all directions. The innermost planets were immediately pulverised in the explosion, and the rest of the worlds in this system had only seconds left in their brief (by cosmic standards) existence. Tali had no intention of being vaporised, so she brought up the navigational display and engaged the _Maldon's_ FTL drive. Unfortunately the universe had it in for Tali'Zorah at the exact moment, in a bit of cosmic spite against someone who really did not deserve it.

The instant she attempted to jump to FTL, the ship's computer crashed.

When she saw the words _segmentation fault (core dumped)_ appear on the monitor, she let out a string of profanity that would have made even a hardened space pirate blush. At the same time the ship's engines died, leaving them completely adrift while the monstrous cloud of stellar material was drawing every closer by the second, consuming the third and fourth planets in the system in a hellish wave of destruction.

"Vrael, get those engines started!" she barked, and Vrael, still inebriated, stumbled towards the lower deck. Too drunk to even realise what he was doing (and not being a very competent engineer in the first place), he could do nothing except push random buttons on the control panel in a frantic attempt to restart the ship's drive core. Because the universe was not _entirely_ malicious, his furious button-pushing managed to restart the engines by some great cosmic coincidence.

Meanwhile Tali was waiting for the ship's computer to reboot, which was now taking what seemed like an eternity. _Why didn't anyone defragment the memory core?_ she thought as lines of text scrolled by on the monitor and the wave of stellar matter drew ever nearer. She swore to herself that if they survived this mission she was going to hack the olfactory filters on Prazza's suit that every time he inhaled it would smell worse than the inside of a waste reclamation facility.

With seconds to spare the ship's computer finally came online. Without a moment's hesitation Tali engaged the ship's drive, causing the _Maldon _to lurch suddenly as it entered FTL speeds a mere two and a half seconds before the ship would have been utterly destroyed by the supernova. Assured that they had evaded certain death, Tali breathed a sigh of relief, but the cosmic forces of fate were not finished with their sadistic game. Merely half a minute after going to FTL the _Maldon_ once again lurched as it was kicked back to sublight speeds.

That would not have been so terrible were it not for the fact that the view through the cockpit glass was now filled with a blue/green planet that the _Maldon _was hurtling towards. Tali wondered how they could have reached such a planet after having only been in FTL for a few seconds, but she was shaken from her thoughts when the ship struck the upper atmosphere, resulting in a stream of complains from the ship's VI.

_"Warning! Velocity 982% of maximum recommended suborbital speed. Structural failure imminent. Warning! Main engines offline. FTL drive offline. Life support failing..."_

"Oh dear," said Skaal, staring out the cockpit window. "I always knew it would end like this – all of us screaming in terror as our ship disintegrates around us. It really makes you think, doesn't it? I don't suppose anyone will shed a tear for me after I'm gone. Oh, it's all so depressing..." As for the rest of the crew, Vrael had run off somewhere while Prazza was sitting in a corner gibbering to himself.

The ship's engines were inoperative, but the manoeuvring thrusters were still functioning. They would not be enough to stop the ship from crashing planetside, but if she could use the thrusters to reduce their rate of descent then they might have a chance at not being ripped to pieces by the rapidly-increasing atmospheric resistance. The _Maldon_ had become a fireball, surrounded by a raging cloud of superheated air, and if there were anyone alive on the surface of the planet they would see their ship streaking through the sky like a meteor.

From what Tali could see the world below consisted of a great deal of water, which meant she had the choice of sending them to either a fiery death or a watery death. Then she noticed that there was something very familiar about the shape of this planet's landmasses, and she realised that this was no ordinary planet, but Earth itself, even though it was impossible that they could have reached it in so short a time. There was no time to think on the reasons for the incredible occurrence, however, as the _Maldon_ was once again on the brink of destruction, as the ship's VI was fond of pointing out.

_"Warning! Outer hull temperature exceeding acceptable levels. Hull failure imminent."_

Diverting all available power to the thrusters, she managed to raise the ship's nose a little, reducing their ludicrous rate of descent before they entered the denser lower atmosphere. That left the issue of finding a place to land their ship. Their present course was taking them towards a large continent in the northern hemisphere, and the thrusters did not have sufficient power to steer them away. Their only hope was that their ship would not become a smoking crater when it landed. Joker could have pulled it off easily, setting the ship down as gently as a feather, but Tali had nowhere near that level of skill as a pilot. In fact Vrael was the designated pilot for their mission, but he had run off somewhere in a sudden (but not unexpected) episode of cowardice.

They were now hurtling through the clouds, and Tali could make out rives, lakes, forests, plains on the ground below. Their rate of descent was slowing as they sailed through thicker air, but it was still much too high. No matter what she did now, they were going to hit the ground hard. The altimeter was quickly approaching zero...10000 metres, 9000, 8000, 7000...and as Earth's surface rose up to meet them Tali's only thought was, _if we survive this, I'm going to kill Prazza._

Suddenly the ground became a blur of treetops rushing past. A few seconds later there was a horrible cacophony as the _Maldon_ ploughed through the trees, followed by a sudden jolt as the ship skidded off a large escarpment, resulting in a loud cry of "Mommy!" from Prazza. In fact, this first impact probably saved all their lives, as it bled off enough velocity that when the _Maldon _finally impacted the ground it was not going nearly fast enough to kill them all. Instead it threw everyone against the forward bulkheads, and as Tali's body impacted the cockpit glass the only thing she felt (besides excruciating pain) was the sudden realisation that there really ought to be some sort of restraint system installed on these ships.

Groaning in pain, she slowly rose to her feet, relieved that she had no broken bones or suit ruptures. "Is...is everyone all right?"

The first voice she heard was Skaal's. "Keelah, I'm...alive?" His tone of voice was more one of despair than relief.

Juodaan and Vrael came staggering into the cockpit, looking dazed but unhurt. It was Prazza, however, that would soon bear the brunt of Tali's wrath. She grabbed him by the arm and jerked him upright, fighting the urge to give him a thrashing right then and there.

"What the hell were you doing, Prazza? I leave the cockpit for less than an hour and I come back to find you're already getting us in trouble?"

Immediately he went on the defensive, crossing his arms in defiance. "I just wanted to find out what would happen if I scanned the star for minerals. Don't you have any sense of curiosity, Tali?"

"What, did you think the mineral scanner was a toy for you to play with? Do I have to start leaving messages saying 'do not touch' on every console?"

"I didn't know what would happen! You can't blame this on me, Tali."

As much as she hated to admit, Prazza was right about that part. No one could have foreseen that something as basic as a mineral scanner could cause a star to go supernova, something that had very grave implications indeed. If this information got into the wrong hands, there would be no end to the amount of havoc they could wreak with the ability to blow up stars at will.

At the moment there were far more pressing concerns. The first thing was to see what kind of condition their ship was in and determine if it were spaceworthy. With the force they had crashed with there was a high probability that the _Maldon_ would never fly again, but given that they were in the heart of Alliance space there was a very good chance that ships were already on their way to investigate the crash. Of course, they would doubtless be rather curious as to why a bunch of quarians in an old banger of a spaceship had suddenly appeared in the skies over Earth.

Tali looked out the cockpit glass and saw that they had landed in some heavily forested area, as she could see nothing else except tall trees surrounding the _Maldon._ It was quite possible that there were people nearby who had seen their ship go down, so Tali activated the _Maldon's_ scanners and began a sweep of their immediate surroundings. A few seconds later the sensors detected a small settlement about five kilometres away, which was easily within walking distance. She breathed a sigh of relief, knowing they had just escaped a horrible, fiery death. The admiralty would be upset, to put mildly, that the system they had intended to mine had been utterly destroyed, but Tali would deal with that when the time came.

A quick scan of the ship's systems revealed that both engines were offline, though a direct examination would be required to determine if there was any hope of ever getting them working again. To her surprise there there were no breaches anywhere in the hull and its integrity had not been compromised, which meant the _Maldon_ should still be spaceworthy. _Humans really do build good ships,_ she thought. _The fleet ought to buy more vessels from them._

The communications systems were still functional, so she decided to contact the Alliance and let them know what had happened. But when she powered up the comm array Tali discovered that they were picking up absolutely no broadcasts on Alliance frequencies. In fact there was no FTL comms traffic at all, just AM and FM radio transmissions, which were only used for short-range communication.

"I don't understand; I'm not picking up any Alliance transmissions," she said. "All I'm getting is low-power radio broadcasts." Even though she still had no idea what was happening, Tali felt a sudden sense of dread welling up in her gut. In letting her survive the supernova and the crash, the universe had given her all the favours it was willing to and would now resume its usual routine of doing horrible things to her.

Skaal sighed. "Obviously the humans hate us and don't wish to talk to us."

At first she thought that the communication antenna must be damaged, but a thorough diagnostic revealed that it was functioning properly. Not only that, they _were_ picking up a signal – albeit a faint one – that belonged to the usual spectrum of galactic comms frequencies. It was a repeating signal transmitted from all mass relays that essentially functioned as a sort of galactic timekeeping code, allowing ships to synchronise their clocks despite the vast distances between them and possible relativistic effects involved with FTL travel. The _Maldon_, being a human ship, resolved this signal into a time and date format understandable to humans:

_13:35, 06/23/2005_

"No..." she whispered. This was not possible. Clearly there was some error with the ship's computer.

She activated the ship's VI interface. "Why is our computer displaying the wrong date?"

The VI paused while it analysed the problem. _"This vessel is synchronised with the standard galactic timing signal. Indicated date is accurate to within 0.3 picoseconds."_

Vrael gave a mocking laugh, the last sound she wanted to hear. "Congratulations, Tali'Zorah. You've just invented a _time machine!"_

Fighting back the panic rising within her, she once again queried the VI. "This can't be. What happened during the last jump?"

_"FTL drive core was not restarted according to proper startup procedure. Combined with an error in the drive core software, this caused a divide-by-zero condition during the initial jump to FTL velocity."_

"Then the drive should have shut down if there was an error!"

_"There was no error. The engine control software successfully divided by zero. There is no data available on this condition, but it is likely that the creation of a mathematically impossible situation resulted in catastrophic disruption of the space/time continuum and the creation of a quasi-permanent intra-universe traversable wormhole."_

In fact, Tali'Zorah was the first sapient being in the Milky Way to encounter what the most brilliant astrophysicists in the galaxy referred to as a "Big Impossible Thing Causing Havoc" (or BITCH for short). According to theory, doing something that the laws of the universe forbade, such as squaring the circle or successfully counting to infinity, would result in violent and unpredictable consequences, as if the universe itself were saying, "hey, now wait just a minute..." In short, one had to do something so essentially and incredibly _wrong _that the universe couldn't handle it and reality momentarily took a break. The scale of the effect was directly correlated to the degree of impossibility, with minor impossible acts such as adding one and one to get three or becoming a married bachelor producing only mildly catastrophic effects, while something much more impossible would have dire ramifications indeed. Dividing by zero ranked fairly high on the scale of impossibility, and doing so had caused a tear in the spacetime continuum which had flung them thousands of light years across the galaxy and sent them nearly two hundred years in the past. No one on the ship was aware that such a rip in spacetime could also allow incomprehensibly malevolent Outer Gods and other eldritch abominations into the universe, and they were incredibly fortunate that no such creature had come through the rift with them.

As the full realisation of just how dire their situation was dawned on her, Vrael continued to mock her. "What the VI means to say, Tali'Zorah, is that once again you've doomed us all. Most people would stop after blowing up a star and crash-landing their ship, but you had push it and _send us back in time!_"

She was about to point out that none of this was her fault, but what was the point? Instead she went over how they were going to get out of this terrible situation, although even Tali had to admit to herself that it seemed thoroughly hopeless. They might fix the _Maldon_ and get off the planet, but how would they ever return to their own time? The only conceivable solution was to recreate the conditions during the last FTL jump, only manipulate it somehow so that they were flung forwards in time instead of backwards. If they actually managed to pull that off, then the _Maldon_ possessed not only a device capable of destroying a star but also the ability to travel through time, meaning that this old, beat-up spaceship was suddenly one of the most powerful vessels in the galaxy.

Skaal opened the airlock doors and looked out into the woods surrounding the _Maldon._ "So this is the human homeworld," he said, his voice dripping with contempt. "It's _terrible._"

"We've only been here a minute, Skaal," Vrael said.

"I've seen enough to know that I hate it."

Tali was the first to actually set foot outside the ship. She was amazed that she had not suffered a complete mental breakdown when she realised just how dire their situation was, but perhaps that would come later. Walking around to the rear of the ship, she saw the rows of trees flattened during the crash, as well as the deep furrow the _Maldon_ had carved into the ground.

"Oh dear," said Skaal as he looked about, "the trees are covered in prickly needles. How completely unpleasant. And the air is too cold, the ground is too rough, and the sun is much too bright. How do the humans _stand_ it all?"

Vrael was equally disapproving. "So this the world Tali'Zorah kept going on about. Obviously she must hate all beauty and happiness to be interested in such a place as this!"

"This world is not ready for me," said Prazza, adding to the hate. "We're fortunate it does not implode under the awesome weight of my own...awesomeness..."

Juodaan was the last to speak. "I wonder if there's good booze on this planet..."

"Listen!" she said, trying to get their attention. "If we are in the past, then we must not do _anything_ that might alter the future or create a time paradox." As no one had ever travelled back in time before (and all reputable physicists considered it impossible) there was no telling just what might happen in the event of a time paradox. Theories ranged from certain individuals ceasing to exist to the complete and utter annihilation of reality itself, while others postulated the possibility of an invasion by a race of creatures so vile and horrifying that they would make the Reapers wet themselves in terror.

"In this time period, humans had no idea that other species existed beyond their homeworld. Whatever we do, we must avoid contact with them no matter what."

"What she means to say," said Vrael, "is that these stupid humans will panic when they see us."

Prazza suddenly became very excited. "That sounds like fun, actually. Let's prop ourselves up as gods and demand worship and the sacrifice of nubile human females."

_What would happen if I just shot him?_ Tali thought. Would anyone back in the flotilla _really_ miss Prazza that much? "Look, let's just focus on getting our ship working so we can leave before anyone finds us here."

For once the crew listened her and headed back inside the _Maldon. _Tali did not join them immediately. Instead she wandered about the crash site, taking in the serene beauty around her. She did not agree with her team about this planet, finding it to peaceful and soothing, or at least this particular part of it was. She knew nothing about what human cities were like in her own time, let alone this one. If she remembered her earth history correctly, humans had barely taken their first steps into space and were more than century away from becoming a part of the galactic community. It was amazing that they had come so far in so short a time; a part of her was glad that there was someone new on the scene who could directly challenge the supremacy of the other races. Yet whether humanity was a friend or foe of the quarian people was still an unknown. The Migrant Fleet had no relations with the Alliance, having never passed through any systems controlled by them.

According to her suit's sensors, the air temperature and humidity of this part of the planet would have been quite pleasing to her. Unfortunately the whole planet was teeming with bacteria and other micro-organisms that would cause her a rather horrifying death should she ever set foot outside her environmental suit. How could humans have evolved on a planet where it was so easy to become infected? The answer was, of course, that humans had developed an immune system that was like a hulking krogan berserker, ripping apart anything that came into the body uninvited, while the quarian immune system was more like a customs agent who wasn't very good at his job.

Returning to the ship, Tali headed down to the engine room, where, to her dismay she found Juodaan lying sprawled out of the floor. The stress of the situation was clearly too much for him, so he had set his suit to pump his blood so full of alcohol that he had passed out. Maybe that was for the best, as Tali would much rather attempt to fix the engines herself than let her "chief engineer" do it.

The _Maldon's_ engine room was filthy, although whether that was the result of Juodaan's or the previous owners' slovenliness was unknown. In the middle stood the ship's FTL drive core, which, according to her omni-tool, was still active and seemingly undamaged despite being knocked offline during their re-entry. That was not surprising, given that it was located within the heart of the ship and surrounded by layers upon layers of shielding. But the sublight engines were another story. One of them appeared to be undamaged for the most part, but one engine would not provide enough thrust to reach orbit. The starboard engine was in far worse shape, so she lifted away the access panel to see just how bad it was.

To most other people, the inside of a ship's engine was an incomprehensible array of wires, conduits, pipes, and bits whose purpose could only be guessed at. To Tali it was all child's play. She could tell within seconds what was wrong – the main power coupling had been fried during the crash, probably because the previous engineer was an idiot who had installed it incorrectly (if there were one thing in the universe that was capable of sending Tali'Zorah into a berserk rage, it was improperly installed power couplings). Unfortunately there were no spares aboard the _Maldon;_ Juodaan should have seen to it that there were, but she had long since given up expecting competence from him. She could fashion a new power coupling, but that would require a quantity of platinum that the _Maldon_ did not possess, and there were no non-vital ship components she could salvage it from.

Refusing to give in to despair, Tali went to the cockpit and activated the mineral scanner, much the shock of Vrael.

"What are you doing?" he cried. "Are you trying to blow up another sun?"

"I can fix our engines, but I need about three grams of platinum to make a new power coupling."

Vrael sighed as she continued to scan the surrounding area. It did not take long before the scanner picked up a concentration of platinum, located in the nearby settlement. That was both good news and bad, because while it meant she could repair the _Maldon's_ engines, it also meant that they would have to visit a human city and somehow avoid being seen.

To avoid experiencing any other unexpected catastrophes, she immediately switched off the mineral scanner. "We can get platinum in the human settlement," she explained, "I should be able to set an omni-tool to detect it at close range. But we _must not be seen!_ If these people see us they could turn...hostile."

Prazza, who had until now been watching Earth television broadcasts on his omni-tool, added his own stupid opinion to the mix. "Then we go in with guns blazing and take it for ourselves. No one keeps Prazza from his transition metals! No one!"

There was a spanner sitting atop one of the consoles, and Tali had to fight the urge to pick it up and throw it at him. "No, you idiot! No one must see us! Don't you understand? We're in the past – if humanity learns now that there are other races in the galaxy, who knows how the future will change?"

"All right, all right, we'll figure something out tomorrow," said Vrael. "For now let's just work on getting the rest of our ship's systems fixed."

This was quite possibly the first sensible thing he'd said since the start of their mission.


	3. Quarians in Time

Chapter 3 – Quarians in Time

* * *

That night, while the rest of the _Maldon's_ crew slept, Prazza and Vrael were awake. They stood outside the ship where none of the others could hear them, speaking in low voices. Neither of them had any respect for Tali whatsoever – their level of respect was roughly on par with how krogan love poetry was regarded by literary critics (it was a widely accepted truth that krogan love poetry was the third worst form of literature in the galaxy, with the bottom two positions being occupied by erotic _Galaxy of Fantasy_ fan fiction and Ardat-Yakshi romances, a genre previously known as "young adult"). Their dislike of Tali was quite possibly the only thing the two of them agreed on, and were it not for that they would probably be trying to beat each other to death with chairs right about now.

Prazza's voice was dripping with contempt. "Tali'Zorah is an idiot. I swear they must have trained her badly on purpose as a joke or something."

"You don't know the worst of it," said Vrael. "You should have heard her go on about Shepard and his damn ship. For two weeks after she returned it was only damn thing she talked about! It's clear the stupid bint was in love with him - a quarian loving a human! Have you ever heard of something so disgusting?"

"I think I just threw up in my suit a little."

"Sometimes I seriously question her loyalty. The admiralty asked her for the location of the _Normandy's_ crash site, hoping to salvage it, but she only got angry, spewing all this rubbish about how it was a war grave and we should respect the dead. Ha! As if the humans would ever respect _our_ burial customs."

"Tali is ruining everything for us. She's always going 'do this!' or 'don't do that!' And now she's turned this mission into a disaster! It's like that time I was playing _Galaxy of Fantasy,_ and we were holding a wake for a player who'd died in a real life, when all of a sudden these batarians show up and kill everybody! Tali's like that."

Vrael lowered his voice even further. "We'll never got off this wretched planet if we keep listening to her. She said there's the platinum we need in the settlement not far from here, so tomorrow morning, before Tali wakes up, we'll steal away from the ship and get it ourselves. I don't care what these humans will do; it's not important. If they don't give us what we want, we'll take it by force."

"_Keelah, _even you'd make a better captain than Tali! Why did they pick her instead of you?"

Vrael gave a mocking laugh. "Because she's Rael'Zorah's daughter, that's why. No other reason. If I were in charge we'd be back on the flotilla already, enjoying a fresh round of nutrient paste."

The rest of their conversation consisted of further discussion of Tali's horrendous leadership ability, her utterly unfashionable suit, and most importantly, just how ugly she had to be under her helmet. "Uglier than a vorcha's ass," was a phrase bandied about, along with "good thing Shepard never lived to see her face – he would have clawed his eyes out." When they were finished tearing her to shreds, Vrael and Prazza returned to their ship, with Tali none of the wiser about their scheme.

* * *

Living aboard a spaceship for one's entire life, the average quarian quickly developed a sort of sixth sense for when things were going wrong. Just by the sounds a ship was making, they could tell when a CO2 scrubber had failed or if one of the air filtration units was clogged. It was a necessary survival skill, given the rather precarious existence of most ships in the Migrant Fleet, many of which were being held together more by the hopes and prayers of their crews than by any kind of molecular bonds. Like any self-respecting quarian Tali had learned this skill well, but in the past few days she developed a particular variant of it: the ability to sense whenever her crew was about to screw things up. And on that morning, this particular sense was sending out all manner of warnings inside her brain.

Skaal was in the meeting room, sulking about something, while Juodaan was sitting in a corner, head clutched in his hands and no doubt suffering the after-effects of a heavy night of drinking. There was no sign of Prazza or Vrael, which worried her greatly, because the two of them would normally have nothing to do with each other, and the only thing that they shared in common was a dislike of her.

There was no sign of them outside the ship, were two possible explanations – one was that they had gone off to explore their surroundings, which was rather unlikely given Vrael and Prazza's contempt for this planet. The other was that they were going to the human settlement to obtain the platinum themselves, which was a far likelier possibility. Neither of them had shown any concern for timeline contamination or the creation of time paradoxes, and now they were wandering right into a human city in broad daylight. Maybe, if she moved quickly, she could stop them before they reached their destination.

With her omni-tool set to guide her, Tali made her way into the woods, muttering curses under breath all the while. When she was younger she would often why the universe was so unfair whenever bad things happened to her, and ask herself what she had done to deserve such shabby treatment. Then she had realised that, if the universe truly were fair, then that meant she really _did_ deserve to have terrible things happen to her. Since then Tali had always taken a measure of comfort in the inherent unfairness of the universe, but what was happening now was far past "unfair" and into the realm of outright maliciousness on the universe's part.

The ground ahead was rough and covered in roots and stones, making for slow travel. The stories she'd heard about the quarian homeworld painted a picture of somewhat arid planet, covered in great, sweeping plains. There were places like that on Earth, too, so why couldn't they have crashed there instead? Then again the forest worked well to conceal their ship from any prying human eyes. Tali shuddered at the realisation that even the most insignificant of actions might change the future in unexpected ways, and she feared that the future they would return to (_if_ they ever returned) would be unrecognisable. Perhaps there would even be some sort of "time police" who would put her under arrest the moment she came back, telling her "You've created a time paradox, Tali'Zorah! You can't just go changing the future like that!"

A half hour later she came to the edge of a large lake, with the opposite shore nearly three kilometres away. That was where the settlement lay, and according to her omni-tool's scanner, Vrael and Prazza were already there. No doubt the humans were panicking at the sight of two aliens in their midst, and there was a distinct possibility that they were already dead and their corpses were about to undergo some sort of autopsy. As grimly amusing as that thought was, it would mean that the timeline could be hopelessly corrupted by now. She had to hurry to prevent any further damage.

As she neared the human town it was revealed to be shockingly quaint. Go back two hundred in years in asari or krogan history, and things were not much different. On Earth it seemed it like an entirely different culture. Everything here was ancient – primitive, petroleum-powered vehicles, analog AM/FM transmissions, buildings constructed from _wood_ of all things...how had humanity become what it was just two centuries after _this?_ And what would they be like two centuries from now? It was rather frightening, to say the least. Maybe the other races were right to worry about humans. But this was not the time to be thinking on such things. She had two idiot crewmen to track down, and Tali suspected that all she had to do was follow the trail of chaos they left in their wake.

According to her omni-tool, the town had a population of less than a thousand, and one look revealed that it was little more than two rows of buildings along a road. Tali stayed hidden in the trees, which was not the best place to hide given that her suit hardly blended in with the foliage. Prazza and Vrael were very close now, yet there were no signs of any sort of uproar or panic in the settlement. Perhaps the two of them had decided to be smart and obtain the platinum by stealth. Of course, if Prazza had any say in matters, then the probability of them doing anything smart was approximately nil.

Every so often Tali would hear one of the petroleum-powered vehicles roar past on the nearby road. While they were indeed primitive, she had to admit that she was quite curious about them and would have liked to obtain one if it were possible. But that was being selfish of her. Prazza and Vrael were moving towards her, so she positioned herself to intercept them, all the while she was mentally preparing to berate them. Not that it would have any effect. Maybe she was right about not being leadership material. How could she ever be considered worthy of command if she could not gain the respect and loyalty of her crew? She might protest that her "crew" consisted of an idiot, a jerk, a depressive, and a drunken sot, but that sounded like merely an excuse, one the admiralty would never accept.

From somewhere off in the woods, she heard the voices of Prazza and Vrael. "...must say, these humans are even dumber than I thought!"

"You have to keep your expectations very low when dealing with them, I'm afraid. Doubly so when in the past."

"I do like their vids, though. I wonder how Captain Picard is going to get his ship out of trouble in the next episode?"

The two them stopped talking when they saw Tali standing in front of them. "Tali? What are you doing here?" said Prazza.

She crossed her arms. "I was going to ask you the same thing!"

"We were getting your platinum," Vrael said defiantly. "We weren't going to wait around for you to come up with some plan to get it."

Tali could contain her anger no longer. "You _idiots!_ Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you have any idea how the future might change because you revealed the existence of alien life to humanity decades before they were supposed to find out?"

Vrael just waved his hand in dismissal. "You're worrying about nothing, Tali. No one knew we were aliens. Everyone seemed to think were some sort of avant-garde musicians. We found the platinum in a coin collector's shop of all, places; it seems like these humans still use primitive physical currency. Of course, we had to trade Prazza's omni-tool for it, but-"

"You did _what?"_

"Oh don't start with me, Tali! These primitive screwheads won't know what to do with it anyway."

She could not remember ever feeling so angry. These two had disobeyed direct orders and potentially caused havoc with the timeline; if they ever made it back to the flotilla she was going to let the admirals know exactly what she thought of her crewmen.

"Do you know how much data was on that?" she cried. "It's got information on every race and every known planet in the galaxy! It has nearly two centuries of history stored on it! If the humans-"

"Like I said, Tali, they won't know what to do with it. Now let's get this platinum back to our ship before-"

_"What the hell is going on here?"_

The three of them turned around to see two humans standing in the bush, their eyes wide with horror. One appeared to be older, the other young, but what Tali's eyes were focused on were the shotguns in their hands. They were two men out hunting, who had stumbled across three ludicrously-clad people standing in the woods, all of whom appeared to be missing two fingers and two toes.

"Who...who are you? What are you _doing _here?" said the older man.

Tali whispered a curse under her breath, and was about to respond to the two humans when Prazza spoke first. "We were just...um...live action role-playing! Yes! For _Galaxy of Fantasy,_ see, and we're in costume. We're just waiting for our gamemaster to show up. We're not quite up to speed on all the changes in the new third edition, see."

It sounded like dumbest way out of their situation, but it seemed to be working, until the younger man spoke up. "I've played every RPG out there, and I've never heard of _Galaxy of Fantasy._"

"It's just been released," said Tali, getting in on the deception. "It's very popular in..in..." She struggled to think of a human nation, as she had only heard of one of them while reading up on the _Maldon's_ mineral scanner. "In Finland! It's _huge_ there. Over five billion players, from what I've heard."

Fortunately neither of the two humans noticed that she had just overestimated the population of that country by a factor of a thousand. The older human just shook his head. "Kids today...back in my day we made do with pouring salt on slugs..."

The humans departed and Tali breathed a heavy sigh of relief, amazed that Prazza had actually managed to get them _out _of a difficult situation and not into one like he usually did. She wanted to go back into the town and retrieve Vrael's omni-tool, but doing that risked disrupting the timeline even more. Maybe she was worrying overmuch; the humans might well regard the data on it as being fictional nonsense or part of some role-playing game.

Prazza knew he had saved them and was happily gloating about it all the way back to the ship. "They would have shot us if I wasn't there. Now you see, Tali, just what a valuable member of the crew I am! Perhaps the admiralty will give me a medal...now _that_ I'd like to see: Prazza, _Hero of the Flotilla!_ I'll be able to link suit environments with any woman I wish!"

Tali ignored him. She could have continued to chew them out for their stupidity, but what would it gain her? Still, she refused to be accept the idea that she was completely blameless in this. If only she could gain their respect then maybe, just maybe, they might actually _listen_ to her. Maybe it was naïve of her to think so, but Tali wanted to believe that everyone, no matter how incompetent or idiotic he might be, had at least _one_ thing they were good at. All she had to do was find this one skill and build upon it, and if she could do that then maybe they would see her as something other than a nagging harpy.

How had Shepard done it? He had taken people of various races – asari, krogan, turian – and made them into a team that worked like a well-oiled machine. He had that sort of intangible, magnetic quality that made everyone stop and listen, while Tali was certain she had nothing of the sort. Her words to her crew probably came off sounding less like words and more like a droning, animal bleating. _You got this position only because of your father, and you know it. _She wasn't ready for the realities of command, and she did not expect that the admiralty would show her any mercy when they learned that the system they intended to mine had been utterly obliterated.

The platinum Vrael and Prazza had obtained was actually a large coin, probably one that was quite valuable, given the scarcity of platinum on this planet. The instant they returned to the _Maldon_ Tali got to work assembling a new power coupling. She found that she was always happiest whenever she could fully absorb herself in her work, as it drowned out any outside distractions and took her mind off anything troubling her. Unfortunately the piece of the equipment that would melt down the platinum coin into something usable was not cooperating with her, due to some strange coincidental interaction with the Perkele5000 mineral scanner.

What Tali did not know was that this was not, in fact, a coincidence. The mineral smelter was manufactured by yet another human company, this one named _Svenska Mineraler och andra Skit AB _(or SMSAB, for short). This particular company was engaged in a bitter rivalry with Arcturus Geoscience Inc., a rivalry that had led to open corporate warfare on multiple occasions, culminating in the great Battle of Ganymede, where fleets belonging to the rival companies had blasted each other into oblivion, leaving no survivors. Arcturus Geoscience Inc. claimed that Svenska Mineraler made cheap, reverse-engineered knock-offs of their own products, while Svenska Mineraler insisted that they were correcting the egregious design flaws of their competitor. In recent times open warfare had been replaced by the mere hurling of insults, with Arcturus Geoscience Inc. calling their opponents "lutefisk-chomping assclowns with trolls for mothers" while Svenska Mineraler insisted that the competition was filled with "vodka-swilling, know-nothing Finnish pukestains." Out of spite, equipment from one company was specifically designed not to work with that of the other, thus forcing Tali to disconnect the mineral scanner just so she could get to work on making a power coupling. She wouldn't care either way about the corporate rivalry if she ever learned of it, though she might wonder at the lutefisk remark, as she had once heard an asari matriarch claim that lutefisk was a justification for exterminating humanity. To this day no one had been able to determine if she were joking or not.

For about a half hour Tali was able to work in peace. She should have known it could not last. There was a sudden burst of muffled shouting from the cockpit above, and she knew immediately that one of her crew had gotten himself in trouble again.

She rushed upstairs to finding Vrael helping a limping Prazza into the ship. Prazza's suit was covered with dirt and, more worryingly, he was bleeding from one of his legs. That could only mean a suit rupture, which was bad enough by itself, but it looked like dirt might have gotten into the wound. His suit's would seal off the damaged area by itself and administer antibiotics to fight infection, but there was never any certainty as to the outcome of a suit rupture.

"What happened?"

"We were just out in the woods when came across this large, carnivorous animal. My omni-tool flagged it as _Ursus arctos horribilis,_ but whatever it was, he decided to poke it with a stick. Damn thing nearly ripped him to pieces before I shot it dead."

Prazza was babbling incoherently, a result of a bug in his suit's firmware that had filled his bloodstream with far too high a dose of painkillers. "Get his suit repaired, and make sure no one else wanders off into the woods!"

Vrael and Skaal carried Prazza away, and once again Tali wondered if she were not to blame for this. Maybe she should have been keeping a closer eye on them. But just a second later her mind rebelled against this line of thinking. Her crew were not children who needed mum and dad to look after them at all times, even if they often acted like children. How was she supposed to get her job done with someone like Prazza, who thought that poking Earth wildlife with a stick was a good idea?

_Earth wildlife..._in all her studies of humanity Tali had never bothered to learn much about Earth's flora and fauna. It didn't surprise her that much of it was carnivorous and deadly. Was _everything_ on this planet trying to kill them? Now, more than ever, she wished Shepard were here, if only to see his face when she told him that she had travelled back and crash-landed on his homeworld. Maybe it wasn't quite as spectacular as going to Ilos or defeating a Reaper, but it had to be close.

Another half hour later and she was finished with building the power coupling. Installing it took less than a minute, after which she returned to the cockpit and began the engine initialisation sequence. She made a few prayers to her ancestors, and either they were listening or she was just good at repairs, as the ship's engines roared to life. A quick diagnostic revealed that all primary systems were still functioning – which was rather amazing given the speed at which they'd crashed - and both engines were operating at near full capacity. They might just get out of this alive after all, although that the left the rather glaring issue of how they would return to their own time.

Without even having to think about it Tali entered a trajectory in the navigational system that would quickly put as much distance between them and this planet as possible. Slowly, the ground beneath began to fall away as the ship rose into the air, then became a blur as the thrusters kicked in and sent them speeding upwards through the atmosphere. Less than a minute later the pale blue of Earth's sky became the inky black void of space, with the only other object in sight being Earth's rather large moon. She remembered reading about what a momentous achievement it had been for humanity when they first set foot on their moon, something that now seemed pathetically insignificant compared to what humanity had achieved in her own time.

Though they were back in space, they still had to find a way back to the proper time. For the next two hours Tali looked through hundreds of lines of code from the engine control software until she found the divide-by-zero condition that had caused all this mayhem in the first place. If her line of thinking was correct (and there was a good chance it wasn't) then by reversing the sign of the dividend would cause the engine to fling them forwards in time by the exact same amount it had flung them back. This was only part of the puzzle, however. The ship's VI had stated that the FTL drive had been incorrectly initialised, which meant she had to get Juodaan to restart it in exactly the same way he had the last time. Needless to say, the thought of relying on that drunken sot filled her with despair.

After finding Juodaan who was, not surprisingly, in a drunken haze, she dragged him down the engine room and stood him before the control console. "Now listen carefully," she said. "I need you to restart the FTL in _exactly_ the same way you did before the crash. I don't want you to do it correctly; just the way you did it before."

Juodaan gave her a nervous glance. "Oh, well, um...you see..."

"Just do it!"

He sighed, and then, to Tali's abject horror, covered his mask with one hand and began hammering buttons at random with the other. He must have done something right, however, as the FTL drive sprang to life, and a moment later she was back in the cockpit, plotting their FTL jump. Tali was not religious – few, if any quarians were – and no one honestly believed that their honoured ancestors exerted any influence in the world, but at that instant she was praying that their ship would return them to their proper time, and when it did, they would not discovered that the timeline had been hopelessly corrupted by their meddling.

There was a lurch as the ship jumped to FTL velocity, and as it did Tali swore that she heard someone speaking from far off, saying "That Tali'Zorah has just torn the universe a new one two times in a row! How does she get away with that sort of thing?" Once again the ship's drive core successfully divided by zero, ripping a hole in the spacetime continuum into which the _Maldon_ fell. It was only there for half a second, but in that time the ship was under threat by countless legions of demonic, soul-devouring, ichor-dripping hellspawn and nightmare death machines, or possibly nightmare death machines travelling inside a demonic, soul-devouring, ichor-dripping hellspawn, along with all manner of indescribably terrifying cosmic horrors, thousand-tentacled abominations, unspeakably horrifying corrupted gods, and that wasn't even mentioning the the gargantuan galaxy-devouring Chaos Gods who stood ready to annihilate all life in the universe simply for a laugh.

When the _Maldon_ returned to sublight speed, the first thing Tali did was check the date according the galactic timing signal, and to her immense relief it showed that they were back in their time, just days after Prazza's bumbling had caused the supernova. According to the navigational computer, they were still within Earth's solar system, so Tali set a course the mass relay, not wanting to arouse undue suspicion. No doubt any Alliance ships in the area would find it rather strange that a ship containing five quarians had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

As the _Maldon_ made its way to the mass relay, she brought up an extranet terminal and began reading the latest news broadcasts, hoping to see if anything had been changed by their little sojourn into the past. It was impossible to tell for certain just by looking at the news, yet nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. The Citadel Council was still being obstructive, Cerberus was still cackling evilly to itself, and the Batarian Hegemony was still spewing hilariously over-the-top propaganda. If anything had changed, it would take further investigation on her part to find out.

Given that they were out of danger (at least for the moment), Tali went to check on Prazza. He was lying on his bunk with Vrael standing over him, whose omni-tool was to set to medical mode.

"How is he?"

"He's spent the past hour babbling non-stop about cupcake pixies and magical bosoms, but I think the infection's contained. We'd better get him back to the fleet, though."

Not wanting to wait around and see how Vrael was going to blame this on her, she went to the captain's quarters and began thinking about how she was going to explain everything to the admiralty. Obviously they couldn't reveal their little time-travelling episode, as no one would ever believe them, which left the small matter of having blown up a star. Blaming it on the mineral scanner was almost as unbelievable, but what else could she say? The galaxy had to know, lest other systems suffer similar mineral scanner-related catastrophes. The damn things were a bloody menace.


	4. Overdrawn at the Blood Bank

Chapter 4 – Overdrawn at the Blood Bank

* * *

It was just Tali's luck that the admiral responsible for her debriefing was the always-unpleasant Zaal'Koris vas Qwib Qwib. She would never let her disrespect show, of course, but the man was simply insufferable. Maybe it was his grating, condescending tone of voice or his superior attitude, but more likely was the fact that the man was a blatant geth apologist. In his own words, what the quarians had done to the geth was "not very nice at all" and that by driving their masters from the homeworld they were merely defending themselves. Tali might try to argue with him, yet that would be like banging her head against a bulkhead.

"We sent you to survey a system in the hopes of finding any significant mineral deposits that might help the fleet. We all approved this mission...well, except for Admiral Xen, but she disapproves of everything, especially all that helping...but regardless, you caused _a star to explode!_ Any mineral deposits in that system are now scattered over millions of kilometres!"

"That wasn't my fault!" she protested. "Prazza was an idiot and aimed the mineral scanner at the star;_ that's_ what it made it go supernova. How was I supposed to know that a simple mineral scanner is actually a weapon of mass destruction?"

She expected that Zaal'Koris would berate her for this seemingly-ludicrous story, but he only gave a tired sigh. "Truly, Tali, sometimes I wonder if you do these things on purpose. Let us hope your next assignment does not involve so many...explosions."

"And what is my next assignment, admiral?"

"A week ago we received a report of a derelict vessel named the _Gelderland _in the Hades Gamma cluster, presently orbiting a gas giant. The ship's mass effect core is still keeping it from falling into the planet's atmosphere, but we don't know how much longer it will last. The admiralty wants you to get your team in and salvage as much as possible before the ship's orbit decays."

That sounded simple enough, and while salvage operation might sound mundane, that was precisely the sort of thing she was looking for after the madness of their last mission.

"There is one more thing you should be aware of, Tali. The _Gelderland_ is flagged as a Cerberus vessel; we don't know why their ship's gone derelict or why they have yet to send a salvage vessel of their own, but you should take every possible precaution."

Cerberus was a well-known name in the galaxy, and a very _hated_ name at that. They were some sort of human-supremacist organisation, although most considered even that appellation to be entirely too generous, preferring instead to refer to them merely as "terrorists." No one knew much about them, such as how many members they had or who was in charge of it all; the only thing known for certain was that Cerberus was funded by a number of lucrative front companies, although no one knew exactly what those companies were. There was a good deal of anecdotal evidence, however, that suggested that Hellstorm Entertainment, creators of that _Galaxy of Fantasy_ MMORPG, were one of these front corporations, funnelling users' subscription fees directly to Cerberus.

The admiralty wasn't going to give her a new crew; no, that would make _far_ too much sense. Actually, there was one newcomer to the team, a woman named Vaala'Shan who happened to be Prazza's girlfriend. Tali tried to avoid passing judgement on someone whom she had never met, but how much could one expect from someone who was in love with Prazza? Not that Tali had any right to speak about relationships. The only man she had ever felt any attraction to was a non-quarian, and she was still wondering if that were somehow perverted of her. Would Shepard consider it wrong if he felt attracted to her? Was it even _possible_ for him to feel that way? After all, humans and quarians weren't that different in terms of physical appearance, with the only major difference being that humans had five fingers and toes and quarians had three. Of course, there was still the weak quarian immune system and the two species' incompatible biochemistry to worry about...

Keelah, why was she even thinking of this? Due to the small matter of him being dead, being with Shepard was a thing of such a magnitude of impossibility that, should it ever occur, it was entirely possible that all of reality would be destroyed in the process. And no matter how strongly she felt, Tali had no intention of being held up as the one responsible for the utter annihilation of the universe. Instead it was far likelier (and much less universe-rending) that she would meet another quarian, fall in love, get married, and while things would be wonderful at first the passion would fade as time went on, until a general malaise set in, deepening to eventually hostility. That hostility would become bitterness, which would in turn become outright hatred, at which point the two of them would realise that their marriage had become a dreary, suffocating, miserable state of affairs, but they would agree to stay together for the sake of their children, no matter that their lives had become empty and meaningless...

Maybe being with Shepard wasn't so wrong after all.

They weren't getting a new ship, although this was hardly unexpected. Quarians ran ships until maintaining them was more effort than it was worth. Before her crew arrived she spent an hour or so in the _Maldon's_ engine room, trying to tweak the propulsion system to optimal efficiency. No doubt Juodaan would get drunk once again and make a hash of it all sooner or later. When she was done with that, Tali retreated to the captain's quarters and began doing something she had never bothered doing on her first mission: reading up on her own crew. If she were ever going to earn their respect, then it would be a good to know something about them other than the myriad ways in which they annoyed her.

The first bio was Prazza's, and it did not look promising. He had no family name, because his family had disowned him for reasons that were kept secret, although there were rumours that it involved _Fornax _magazine somehow. Neither did he have a ship name because – to Tali's great surprise – _Prazza had not completed his Pilgrimage yet_ and thus had not earned his place on any quarian vessel. Apparently no one in the 300 year history of Migrant Fleet had ever decreed that there ought to be some sort of time limit on a Pilgrimage (anyone who did not return was assumed to either have died or run away), and Prazza had never actually gotten around to finishing his. Whether he would ever actually do so was anyone's guess.

The rest of the bios were not any better.

Vrael'Grashnahk was a captain's son, which probably explained his ego, but there were numerous disciplinary reports showing conduct that was hardly becoming of someone of his status. There were no serious crimes, but rather incidents such as bringing a crate full of hamsters onto his ship, which then got loose and escaped into the ducts, requiring several weeks of searching to track them all down. More disturbing were the various reports of sexual harassment, something Tali would rather not know the details of.

Skaal'Gard, despite his ever-present melancholy, had shown no signs of depression during his youth. Rather, it had come about during his Pilgrimage for a reason Skaal had never elaborated on (probably because no one could stand talking with him). Whatever had happened, it had utterly destroyed his ability to be happy.

Juodaan'Viinaa had grown up with a mother and father who had ended their marriage (something almost unheard-of among quarians). Tali did not get the impression that this was what had driven him to alcoholism, however. Rather it seemed that it had begun when he was assigned the position of "ship's accountant," a job which was widely-reviled as the dullest job in the flotilla, or quite possibly the entire galaxy. Naturally he had turned to alcohol to ease the mind-crushing tedium of his job, to the point where his captain wondered why their ship's supply of alcohol (a useful disinfectant) always seemed to be on the low side.

She thought back to the sort of people Shepard had made part of his team: a C-Sec officer, a krogan battlemaster, an asari scientist, and two decorated Alliance soldiers. A mere second's comparison between that team and hers was enough to seriously depress Tali. But complaining it about the situation would do nothing to improve it. Instead, she thought about what a great accomplishment it would be if she could transform her team into one that, if not exactly of surpassing greatness, was at least competent.

Tali was utterly unaware that this was, in fact, the single most impossible task in the universe, ranking even higher than escaping from beyond the event horizon of a black hole. Actually accomplishing this deed would not only destroy the entire universe, but all parallel universes as well.

* * *

"Your music, Skaal, is insufferable! I can hear it through the bulkhead – turn it off!"

"A typical philistine you are, Vrael! Veil of Despair is one of the few – perhaps the only – band in existence that comprehends the true, unyielding suffering that is life."

"It's godawful! Just...just play it through your suit so we aren't subjected to it."

Skaal sighed. "Fine. Go on living in your naïve, pathetic little world. Ignore the truth that the only constant to our existences is unending misery."

Tali had not heard any of Veil of Despair's music, but she knew of them. They were, quite simply, the band that produced the most depressing music in all of the galaxy, and that was _not_ hyperbole. Every note of every song was meticulously crafted to be as soul-crushing as possible. Their latest album, _Everyone I Ever Loved Is Dead,_ was delayed for two months because someone pointed out that the final three seconds of one of their songs might be interpreted by asari listeners as offering a glimmer of hope. The band was forbidden from performing anywhere in Citadel Space due to the large numbers of suicides that inevitably occurred during their concerts, and the fact that any VIs in the area, despite lacking consciousness or emotions, were somehow so horribly depressed by the music that they segfaulted. The band was described by the music press as "the ones who taught the geth despair," and anyone who heard their music would be inclined to agree.

While Skaal went off to listen to his horribly depressing music by himself, Vrael turned his attention to Prazza, who was busy playing _Galaxy of Fantasy _on his omni-tool. "You should play a _real_ game, Prazza," he said, and if one could see under his helmet there was no doubt a sneer of contempt on his face. "Give me those old adventure games any day; the ones that'd let you get three quarters of the way through and then screw you over because you forgot something at the very beginning."

"Quiet!" snapped Prazza. "I'm battling a horde of berserkotrolls with my level 78 mage. Damn it all, why didn't I shell out those twenty credits for that armour DLC? It would have made this so much easier..."

Tali glanced at Prazza's omni-tool display, which revealed that his player character was a scantily-clad elf woman with enormous breasts. Somehow this did not surprise her in the slightest. She was going to chide him for playing games while he should have been on duty, but they were only an hour away from their destination – she would wait until they were on board the _Gelderland_ before playing the hard-ass.

"Prazza!" came a shrill, female voice. It belonged to his girlfriend, Vaala, who stood in the doorway to the cockpit with her hands upon her hips. "Stop playing games like a loser and come help me with this bloody VI! It's not accepting my higher command privileges!" The way she spoke was more like one of the Migrant Fleet Marines instructors than anyone's romantic companion.

"Y...yes, dear!" he stammered. "Anything for you, love!" He quickly followed his girlfriend out of the room, looking utterly cowed. This was the first time Tali had ever seen him afraid.

"Ah love," said Skaal, returning to the room to retrieve his omni-tool, which he had forgotten. "It is like a delicate flower."

Tali turned to him. "That's the first positive thing I've heard you say, Skaal."

He stepped back. "Positive? You misunderstand me, Tali'Zorah. Love is like a flower because it is bought with money and will invariably wither and die."

"You know Skaal, if you're so miserable," said Vrael, "then why don't you just do us all a favour and throw yourself out the nearest airlock?"

"Because I know the next life will be even worse than this one," he replied before leaving.

* * *

From the nearest mass relay it was only a few hours' travel at FTL before they reached their destination. In spite of its proximity to the relay this particular system had not been given anything but the most perfunctory of surveys due it its utter lack of valuable resources or anything worthy of scientific study. There were three rocky planets, all of which were either too hot or too cold to sustain any form of life, along with two gas giants, one of which the _Gelderland_ was in orbit around. Actually, the ship was already in the planet's upper atmosphere, with its mass effect core keeping it from being pulled into the lower regions by the planet's immense gravity and supersonic winds.

The planet itself was little more a large, featureless sphere, coloured blue by methane in the upper atmosphere. It was very much like the planet Uranus in the Sol system, although translating the stupid joke about the name "Uranus" into the quarian language was rather difficult. Tali felt a sense of unease as the _Maldon_ approached the gas giant. At least with terrestrial planets there was hard ground to land on if your engines failed. If the same happened in the atmosphere of a gas giant, all that would happen is that your ship would quickly be crushed by the pressure.

"I've got the _Gelderland_ on scanners," Vrael reported, bringing the ship into the upper atmosphere. "Looks like a cruiser by the size of it. We don't have enough crew to fly the thing back to the flotilla, which is what we _ought_ to be doing, and our ship doesn't have anywhere near the cargo capacity to haul back enough salvage to make this trip worthwhile. Either the admirals are a bunch of idiots or there's something they're not telling us."

He was right – an abandoned human cruiser would make a tremendous addition to the fleet, so why _weren't_ they insisting on bringing it back? Now Tali's sense of dread was deepening, and the sudden rocking of the _Maldon_ was doing nothing to help.

"We've hit a crosswind!" said Vrael. "Compensating!" Outside the dark void of space had been replaced by a blue haze, cutting their visibility down to almost nil. According to the scanners the _Gelderland_ was only two thousand metres away, with the distance rapidly decreasing the _Maldon _closed. Still there was no sign of the vessel through the cockpit windows, even as the distance readout went under 500 metres.

"Slow us down, Vrael!" Tali cried. "Before we hit the damn thing!"

At that moment an alarm began to sound and the words _Proximity Warning _flashed in angry red text on the navigational console. A few moments later a ship appeared out of the blue haze, easily dwarfing the _Maldon._ Vrael applied reverse-thrust just in time to keep them from smashing head first into the _Gelderland _which, judging by its size, would not have been greatly damaged in the event of a collision. Like all Cerberus vessels, it had the organisation's logo plastered everywhere on the hull, which seemed rather counter-productive to an organisation that was supposedly secret.

Unlike other Alliance vessels Tali had seen, there was nothing attractive about this particular ship, being little more than a long slab connected to a large drive section in the aft. Still, there was something ominous about it, which was not helped by being shrouded in dark blue haze. Every so often a burst of lightning would fill the interior of the _Maldon_ with blinding white light, followed by a deep rumbling noise. In all her life Tali had never actually set foot on a planet that experienced thunderstorms, and experiencing one for the first time was deeply unsettling.

"Life signs?" she asked.

"Can't tell," said Vrael. "Every time I try to do a scan the scanner locks up. Bloody piece of garbage..."

Having had his fill of incredibly depressing music, Skaal returned to the cockpit and was naturally dismayed by what he saw. "Oh dear, are we all going to be heading on to the creepy abandoned spaceship? This is like something out of those awful horror vids..."

Vrael brought the ship up alongside one of the _Gelderland's_ docking ports. Suddenly the _Maldon_ shuddered violently, nearly throwing Tali to the floor, and there was a horrible shrieking noise that was painful even hearing it through her helmet. Apparenly Vrael wasn't quite the pilot he thought himself to be, and had accidentally brushed their ship up against the hull of the _Gelderland._ They had not collided with enough force to do anything more than scrape the paint, but one could almost see the embarrassed expression on Vrael's face through his helmet.

"Well, looks like she got away from me for a minute there..."

A minute later the _Maldon _was docked with the Cerberus ship. "Get your weapons and salvage equipment, then meet together in the airlock," she said before going to her quarters to retrieve her shotgun and sidearm. Maybe it was mere paranoia, but her time on the _Normandy_ had taught Tali that it was better to be prepared when boarding an abandoned space vessel. Who knew what they might find there?

The rest of the crew was waiting in the airlock, carrying with them a variety of plasma cutters, torches, and other salvage tools. "We don't have enough room on this ship to salvage even a fraction of the _Gelderland,_" she explained, "so we'll have to keep our eyes open for what is most valuable to the flotilla." If there was one upside to salvaging a Cerberus ship, it was that you could loot it to your heart's content and never feel bad about it.

The crew nodded in agreement, for once offering no arguments or complaints. Tali's anxiety was already fading, and she had a good feeling about this mission. After blowing up a star and getting sent back in time, she was anticipating a straightforward and simple assignment. It probably wouldn't take very long to fill up the _Maldon's_ meagre cargo hold with salvage.

With a loud hiss, the _Maldon's _airlock doors opened, followed by those of the _Gelderland_ a second later. Stepping aboard, Tali was greeted by the familiar silence of newly-built human vessels; a stark contrast the noise and harshness of her own ship. The decks and bulkheads of the _Gelderland _were gleaming and brightly lit, which again contrasted heavily the dim and cramped halls of any flotilla ship. There was no sign of the crew however, nor were there any signs on the _Gelderland's_ exterior that it had come under attack or suffered any sort of catastrophe. Everything seemed completely normal.

Everything, that was, save for the gallons upon gallons of blood spattered all over the walls.

"_Keelah..._It's like some large creature just exploded all over the place!" Vrael exclaimed.

Were it the blood of anything other than humans, it would not have been so bad. Asari blood was purple, krogan blood was orange, salarian blood was yellowish, but quarian blood was red, just like that of humans, and seeing it everywhere made Tali nauseous. It was obvious that something terribly wrong had happened here, and even though that was a regular occurrence for Cerberus seeing it first-hand did nothing to lessen the sickening impact of it all.

Skaal gave a despairing sigh. "Obviously the humans hate us so much that they slaughtered themselves prior to our arrival, and just to rub it in our faces they did so in the most gruesome manner possible!"

No sooner had he finished speaking then the airlock doors slammed shut behind them, followed by a warning from the ship's computer. "_Warning: Contaminants present. Quarantine now in effect. All airlocks have been sealed to prevent spread of contamination."_

Vrael struggled to get the airlock doors open again, but it was in vain. They were trapped on board the _Gelderland, _and worse, something was approaching them from down the hall...

At first Tali thought it was one of the crew, but as it drew closer it was clear that it was something else entirely. It looked almost humanoid, but its arms were distended and mutated into giant scythe-like claws and it appeared as if the outermost layer of its flesh had been stripped away. That was horrifying enough, but it was made all the worse by the ghastly growling noise it made, all the while a steady stream of bile and ichor spewed from its mouth, or rather what had once been a mouth. Tali was immediately reminded of the husks the geth often turned people into, but this was something far, far worse.

In an instant Tali raised her Necrobutcher shotgun to her shoulder and fired, sending a swarm of tiny sawblades towards the creature. What happened when they hit their target was far too horrifically gory to describe, but anyone who saw the resulting carnage would swear that the creature had around 87 quarts of high-pressure blood in its body.

"What the hell was _that_ thing?" said Vrael, looking down at the creature's corpse. "Is it one of the crew?"

Vrael appeared to be correct, as the creature, or whatever it was, was still wearing the tattered, bloody remains of a Cerberus uniform. "We need to get off this ship," he said.

Unfortunately the _Gelderland's_ computer had completely locked down the entire ship, sealing the airlock doors behind them and erecting a kinetic barrier around it. Vrael uttered a stream of profanity when he learned that they were effectively trapped about this ship with any number of these ravenous _things._

"Can't we cut through the airlock with our salvage tools?" Tali asked.

Vrael shook his head. "The airlock doors are made from Silaris armour, of all things, and there's _two_ kinetic barriers the ship's put up. It's as if they were expecting us to try this exact thing! Bastards."

If there had been any doubt in Tali's mind that the she was merely a cosmic plaything, it was entirely gone now. This was supposed to be a simple salvage mission, just how their previous assignment was supposed to be a mere mineral survey. Whining about the unfairness of the universe was not going to help their situation in the slightest, however, so she concentrated on what to do next.

"If we can't blast our way through, then we'll have to override the quarantine somehow. I'm guessing the bridge is the place to do it."

"Are you crazy?" said Vrael. "Who knows how many more of those things are crawling all over this ship?"

She was in no mood to argue. "Then I hope we're all ready for a fight."

"Of course!" said Prazza, strutting forward. "If anyone gets in our way, I'll kill them all. _I'll kill them all to death!"_

"Shut up, Prazza!" Vaala snapped. "This isn't one of those stupid action vids you're always watching!"

Admittedly, Tali did not exactly trust her crew with guns. Prazza was obviously trigger-happy and if Juodaan were his usual self he'd be more likely to shoot members of his own team than the enemy. Now was not the time to be second-guessing them, however. Somewhere in the distance she could hear scraping and clawing noises. She didn't know what this ship's crew complement was, but if they had all been transformed into these hideous creatures, then they were most likely outnumbered by a wide margin.

_Just like old times,_ she thought. Except then she had a team she trusted with her life. With the people she had now...not so much.

There was a crash from above, and two creatures dropped in from the ventilation ducts. Like the first one they had encountered, they appeared to be grotesquely mutated humans, with arms and legs shaped into claws and the rest of their bodies looking as they had gone through a meat grinder. Then there the was the horrible sound they made...sounding a bit like a rabid varren crossed with the roar of a thresher maw.

"Open fire!"

The six of them began firing, creating a cacophony that was deafening even with their helmets protecting their ears. It was an incredible barrage of fire, one of that would have cut down even the most heavily-armoured squad, but still the creatures would not die. A shotgun blast from Tali sent one of their heads flying from its body, and even this was not enough to stop it, as it kept crawling along the floor, snarling and growling all the while. Prazza, seeing that bullets were insufficient to kill the thing, rushed forward screaming _"WAAAGH!"_ and stomped his boot down on the creature, resulting in a loud _splat_ as its body came apart. He then turned to the remaining creature and unloaded his pistol into it, continuously firing until his gun's heat sink was at capacity.

"Yeah! _Yeah!" _he cried. "You don't mess with _The Praz'!"_

"This is all your fault, Prazza!" Vaala growled. "You were the one who convinced me to come along on this mission. You said it would just be a salvage operation, but you didn't tell me that Tali'Zorah would be in charge; the one who attracts catastrophes like a magnet!"

"My fault?" he said, finally standing up for himself in front of his girlfriend. "It's all Tali's fault. Everything bad that's happened on our missions is because of her! How many vote to blame Tali for everything that's gone wrong, and _will_ go wrong on this mission?"

Five of them raised their hands, with only Vaala not voting. "I still blame you, Prazza, but I've got a hefty amount of additional blame for Tali."

"Ha! Five to one for pinning it on the human-lover!" Vrael sneered. "Now let's get to the bridge before she finds some other way to screw us all over."

Tali just shook her head. How was she supposed to work with these people? How would she ever gain their respect? Was she truly that contemptible in the eyes of her fellow quarians?

There was no time to think on it, as the rest of her crew pushed ahead past the gruesome corpses of the mutants, creatures, or whatever they were. She brought up the _Gelderland's _blueprints on her omni-tool, which revealed that there were roughly amidships, with the bridge being near the very front of the ship. Getting there would mean go through the ship's medical bay, which might give them information about what had happened here. The others probably wouldn't care, but Tali had to know. Of course, it was hardly surprising that something Cerberus was working on had blown up in their face.

They entered into another hallway, which was also spattered with blood and having numerous scorch marks on the walls and floor – an obvious sign of weapons fire. Corpses were scattered about, many looking as if they had gone through a shredder. The lights flickered on and off, and every so often there would be a burst of sparks from exposed wiring hanging from the ceiling. As they went onwards things only got worse. More bodies, more blood, and with every step Tali had to force down her own fear. She vividly remembered her first mission with Shepard, where she had confessed to him beforehand that she was afraid. He then told her that being brave wasn't about lacking fear (which was just foolishness), but rather possessing the will to overcome that fear. When one is afraid, he said, is the only time one _ca__n_ be brave. Tali repeated those words to herself as she opened the door to the area ahead.

The lighting here was fried, rendering the hallway completely dark. That was a minor issue, as Tali switched her helmet to infra-red display mode. Being stuck in these suits had its advantages. According to her omni-tool, the med bay was just off the hallway ahead.

A scratching noise came from somewhere above, causing the entire team to point their weapons at the ceiling. Her suit registered no thermal readings, and for a while the sound stopped. Everyone remained still, frantically looking about. Prazza was muttering a stream of curse words under his breath, clearly scared out of his wits, and were the situation not so dire Tali probably would have delighted in seeing him taken down a notch.

Suddenly there was sharp crash and the sound of something wet and squishy hitting the floor. Tali spun around to find one of the creatures barely a metre away from her. Like the others its arms were mutated into enormous claws, and when it saw her its head split open with a sickening _crack,_ revealing a set of jaws on the end of a large stalk. Her mind had no time to process such grotesquery, however, as the thing hacked at her with one of its claws. She ducked under it; the claw missing her by mere centimetres, before she pivoted on her left foot and kicked the creature squarely in the chest with the other, sending it reeling backwards. That gave her enough time to bring up her shotgun and fire. The blast blew off one of its legs, which only slowed it down, so Tali fired again, stopping it for good.

Her relief quickly turned to dread once again when the ship rocked violently. The computer chimed in, helpfully letting everyone know just how screwed they all were: "_Warning: Failure of mass effect field imminent. Loss of mass effect field will result in descent to unsafe altitude. Warning: Main engines offline. Recommend immediate restart."_

"What does that mean?" Prazza asked.

"There must be no one left alive in the engine room," said Tali. A ship this size needed a crew of hundreds to run smoothly, and without anyone monitoring the engines they would eventually fail. Just how long had this ship been orbiting without its crew?

"We have to get to engineering and stabilise the field," she continued. "Then we'll have to fire the main engines to push the ship to a higher orbit. If we don't, then...if the field fails, we'll plummet into the lower atmosphere and be crushed like a tin can."

No one said anything for a moment. "Will that be a pleasant way to go?" Skaal asked.

"We should split up," said Vrael. "Three of us head to the bridge to override the lockdown, the rest go down to engineering."

"Are you mad?" Prazza hissed. "Haven't you ever seen a horror vid? Splitting up is a good way to make everyone die horrible deaths!"

"We'll need someone on the bridge to make the course correction after we stabilise the mass effect field and restart the engines. Vrael, since you're our pilot, you'll go to the bridge; Juodaan will accompany me to engineering." That left Prazza, Skaal, and Vaala, who immediately began fighting over who would accompany whom.

"I'm going with Vrael, because he is not Tali!" Prazza declared.

"And I'm going with him," added Vaala. "He'll fall apart without me."

Tali was in no mood to argue. "Fine! Then Juodaan and Skaal are with me. If we don't hurry we're all dead!"

The engine room was near the aft of the _Gelderland,_ naturally, so the three of them made an about face while the others carried on. According to her omni-tool, the engine room could be reached by taking one of the elevators to the engineering section, then reaching the engine room itself by foot. Fortunately, one of the elevators was just a short distance away down the hall.

_Elevators,_ Tali thought,_ my old nemesis. _But this time it was literally true, because as soon as the doors opened a wave of blood poured out, followed by another one of the mutants. It's fingers had become razor-sharp claws, and there was another set of appendages growing out of its stomach, which had also become claws. Whatever had happened to the crew, it was as if something had twisted them into weaponised creatures that were mindlessly bloodthirsty.

Skaal happened to be the one standing nearest the elevator, and the creature immediately knocked him aside with a backhand blow. For whatever reason the thing had gotten the notion into its mind (or whatever was left of it) that Tali was much worthier of being killed than any of her teammates, so the creature charged at her while making a loud "_Blarrrgh!"_ noise. A blast from her shotgun sent it flying backwards, right into the threshold of the elevator. This was not sufficient to kill it, but a second later the elevator doors closed with enough force to bisect the creature, killing it instantly in a scene that would have been grotesquely hilarious were the situation less horrifying.

As soon as the thing was dead Tali helped Skaal to his feet, all the while he was groaning in pain. "Are you hurt?" she asked.

"Nothing in the universe can hurt me so much as life."

The three of them stepped into the blood-drenched elevator. Tali punched in the engineering deck on the control panel (which was also covered in blood), and with a cheerful-sounding chime the elevator began to move. This was then followed by a bit of horrendous elevator music, consisting of some dreadful love song. Tali hated those kinds of songs, feeling that they cheapened the emotion of love, and her dislike of such music was one of the few areas in which she and Skaal were in agreement.

"You see how much the humans hate us?" he said. "They turned themselves in these horrible mutants, and now they bombard us with terrible music just to rub salt in our wounds. Oh, being me is truly drawing the short straw in life! Life...what's the point of life? It's just something you suffer through until something kills you in an indescribably horrible way."

Tali sighed. This was going to be a long mission.


	5. Professor Emeritus of FU

Chapter 5 – Professor Emeritus of FU

* * *

_"WE ARE HARBINGER."_

Didn't it ever shut up?

"_WE ARE THEIR GENETIC DESTINY."_

Somewhere in the deep, dark reaches of intergalactic space, "they" were waiting. Given the superstitious name of "Reapers" by the Protheans, "they" had no name for themselves, as names were only a means for the insignificant creatures of blood and flesh to create the illusion that their existences were of any consequence whatsoever. Each them did have a title unto themselves, however, and right now the Reaper known as Shug'nargoth'shemfhnargataghn was very annoyed at the one named Harbinger. It was clear the race harvested to create it wasn't quite as smart as the others, and among the Reapers Harbinger was a bit of an embarrassment, much like his former partner in crime Nazara. _That_ one always had a cringe-worthy tendency for theatrics, with all that "vanguard of your destruction" and "your words are as empty as your future" rubbish.

"_THE ONE KNOWN AS TALI'ZORAH HAS CAUSED DISRUPTIONS IN THE SPACETIME CONTINUUM. THIS IS BEYOND THE CAPABILITIES OF ORGANICS."_

It was also beyond the Reapers' capabilities, as was causing stars to explode. "_WE MUST OBTAIN THIS ORGANIC SPECIMEN," _answered Shug'nargoth'shemfhnargataghn. "_HER CONNECTION TO SHEPARD IS NONCOINCIDENTAL."_

_ "WE SHALL SEND OUR SERVANTS TO COLLECT HER. IF I MUST TEAR HER APART, I WILL."_

If a Reaper could sigh, Shug'nargoth'shemfhnargataghn would have done so. "_NO, WE MUST PRESERVE HER BODY."_

_ "BUT I-"_

_ "LOOK, WE TALKED ABOUT THIS BEFORE. IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO UNDERSTAND. TALI'ZORAH MUST BE ACQUIRED WITHOUT DAMAGE TO HER ORGANIC MATERIAL."_

_ "BUT MY ATTACKS WILL TEAR HER APART."_

_ "IT IS LIKE SPEAKING TO A CHILD..."_

In the heart of the Milky Way, in a field of debris orbiting a supermassive black hole, a massive vessel powered up its engines. Resembling a giant termite hive, it began moving towards the Omega 4 relay. Its crew little more than mindless slaves of their masters, they had only one goal: find and obtain Tali'Zorah by any means necessary.

* * *

As the elevator sped towards the engineering section, Juodaan tried to make conversation. "So Tali, when you were with Shepard, did you two ever, um..."

"What are you getting at, Juodaan?" Tali asked, annoyed that he was asking such a question at this time.

"I mean, did you ever, uh, link suit environments, or whatever it is humans do?"

She turned to face him. "What kind of question is that?"

"I'm just curious, that's all."

"Of course not," she said, ready to smack him for his unbelievable rudeness. "We were friends, that's all!" Quarians were very social people, and it as unimaginable that Juodaan would be so lacking in social skills as to think that sort of question was at all acceptable. No doubt it was just maliciousness on his part.

"Yes, I'm sure you were," he said, in a tone that made it clear he was not convinced.

"It is good thing she never became intimate with him," Skaal added. "Intimacy only leads to suffering."

The elevator carriage came to a stop, mercifully bringing this abominable conversation to an end. As Tali expected, the engineering section wasn't as shiny and clean as the other decks, which she found comforting in a way. What was _not _comforting were the numerous corpses lying in the hallway, all of them having been gutted, disembowelled, decapitated, dismembered, or killed in various ways that were far too grisly to describe in mere words.

Because that was not enough to throw at her at that precise moment, the ship's computer decided to chime in. "_Warning: Outer hull pressure at 50 megapascals and rising. Recommend immediate ascent."_ As if to echo the computer's warning, there was a loud groaning noise as the ship's hull strained under the pressure of the gas giant's atmosphere.

From where they were, it was two decks down to the engine room. The lights flickered intermittently, and somewhere off in the distance they could hear faint hissing and snarling noises.

"I don't like the sound of that," said Juodaan, and when another mutant crawled up onto the platform he followed up with, "and I don't like the look of it, either!"  
He fired his shotgun as the creature roared in again, sending it flying backwards over the edge of the walkway. "Yes!" Juodaan cried. "Railing kill! I love railing kills!"

They walked down towards the cavernous engine room, and even though they were on a ship filled with mutants and which was plummeting towards certain doom, Tali still had to fight the urge to look at all the ship's systems. Despite the fact that this ship was Cerberus, they obviously knew a thing or two about how to build ships.

Two enormous fusion reactors ran the length of the engine room, each one supplying enough energy to power a small city. In between them were rows of consoles, which would normally be staffed by crewmen. There was a mezzanine, presumably where the chief engineer oversaw the others, but now it was occupied solely by a large, hulking mutant, standing at least double the height of a typical human. It's entire body was covered in some sort of plating that had grown over the flesh, and what had once been its head had become a massive set of teeth from which a steady stream of saliva flowed. The second it caught sight of the three of them, it let out a bellowing roar before leaping from the mezzanine to the lower level, hitting the floor with enough force to nearly knock the quarians on their feet.

Skaal and Juodaan began firing, but their bullets just glanced off the creature's hide. Seeing that this method of attack was ineffective (and that the creature had singled her out specifically for the purpose of crushing her into a pulp), Tali leaped out of its path, grabbing a grenade from her suit as she did and hurling it at the beast. A second later she detonated it, sending the creature to the floor. This wasn't anywhere near enough to kill it, of course, and it quickly got back to its feet and resumed its murderous rampage. Skaal and Juodaan continued firing, which caused the hulking monstrosity to turn its attention to them. Fearing for her crewmates, Tali used her omni-tool to summon a combat drone, a piece of technology she had recently acquired. It appeared as a glowing sphere hovering in the air, which then sought out the nearest enemy and zapped it with jolts of electricity. This wasn't enough to serious harm the creature, of course, but it did distract it long enough for Tali to grab all of her remaining grenades, six in all. She hurled them all at the creature and detonated them simultaneously.

The resulting explosion nearly knocked her off her feet and blew an enormous hole in the engine room floor, but her time with Shepard had largely acclimated Tali to things blowing up around her. Even this did not kill the brute, merely severing its legs, and with renewed fury it began crawling towards her with surprising speed for something that had been ripped in two.

Seeing that her shotgun would be ineffective, she switched over to her pistol, the Disemboweler, which was configured to fire tungsten slugs that, while meant for synthetic foes, would work just as well against the "armour" of her present enemy. She opened fire, having to use both hands just to resist the enormous kickback of her gun. The pistol had originally been designed for large game hunting, with the manufacturer claiming that it could bring down an alpha varren with a single shot. Of course this was just the "official" purpose, when the reality was that the Disemboweler was designed for taking down heavily-armoured or shielded targets, with advertisements for the weapon proudly proclaiming that it was "tougher than your toughest customer!" It was also deafeningly loud, another "feature" trumpeted by its marketers.

After ten seconds of sustained gunfire from Tali and her two crewmen, as well as more blood than Tali had ever seen in one place, the creature was dead. Unfortunately, killing it had used up nearly all their thermal clips, and there were doubtless more of these creatures lurking on the ship.

Her radio suddenly crackled to life. "This Vrael; we've reached the bridge. It's a goddamn bloodbath up here, too. Those things are still trying to get to us; Prazza's holding them off." In the background Tali could hear gunfire mixed in with Prazza's taunts: _"You can't stop The Praz'! I'm invincible! I'll kill you all till you die from it!"_

"We found some interesting data in the captain's log," Vrael continued. "Apparently there were some scientists on board, trying to develop a cure for some human illness called the 'common cold,' but something went wrong and the 'cure' turned the entire crew into these...things."

"_Keelah,_ how do you go from curing a simple viral infection of the respiratory system to these bloodthirsty mutants?"

"I don't know, Tali, but this _is _Cerberus we're talking about. Bastards can't even tie their own bootlaces without something blowing up in their face."

"We can't do anything to help the crew," she said. "Can you override the quarantine?"

"Yes, and as soon as you start up the engine we can make a burn for a higher altitude."

Tali wasted no time in recalibrating the mass effect field generator and then beginning the engine start-up sequence. Normally a cold restart of the engines would require several minutes of preparation, but since time was of the essence she immediately opened the He-3 fuel lines and activated the fusion initiators. This would result in suboptimal fuel efficiency, which made the engineer in her cry, but now was not the time for doing things according to procedure.

The whole room shuddered as the engines roared to life, surging with an awesome amount of power. "Beginning ascent!" radioed Vrael from the bridge, and the noise in the engine room seemed to triple in loudness.

_"Engines firing," _the computer announced, and the whole ship jolted as it began ascending. "_Caution: Asymmetrical thrust in main engines resulting from improper startup will result in course deviation. A notice regarding the incompetence of the chief engineer has been logged. Cerberus reminds all employees that failure to meet expected standards of performance will result in harsh penalties."_

Tali ignored the computer's insult. "Meet us back at the airlock, Vrael. We're getting off this ship."

No sooner had the words passed her lips than all the consoles in the engine room went dark. A voice boomed over the ship's intercom: _"Can't let you do that, Tali'Zorah!"  
_"What...what's going on?"

The console displays were replaced by a bespectacled man with a blood-spattered face. "My name is Dr. Helstrom van de Ontploffende Hoofd, and you and your fellow goat-legged bucketheads are intruding on my ship! Cerberus wanted us to create a cure for the common cold, but instead we ended with something far, far greater – a way of turning ordinary humans into these magnificent creations. They are the perfect killing machines; fearless, relentless, and utterly bloodthirsty. But you have slain my children, Tali'Zorah, and for that you should be dead already!"

"You're insane," she said flatly, ejecting the spent thermal clip for her pistol and inserting a new one.

"Don't you condescend to me, Tali! You've ruined my life, and now I'm going to have my revenge."

"What are you talking about? We've never met." She was considering just ignoring him and going to the airlock. Obviously insanity was a requirement for any researcher wanting to work with Cerberus.

"When you first came to the Citadel, Tali, you banged your ship's door against my Tennekont! It cost me thousands of credits to have it fixed! Then a few weeks later I was leading a research project with the aim of studying the keepers on the Citadel, and since I was worried that I might be arrested for interfering with them I set up my automated scanning equipment in an isolated alleyway. Oh, but who should came along but Tali'Zorah, who meets with some thugs and then blows them up with a grenade, destroying my scanning equipment in the process!"

"I don't know who you are, but I had no idea what you were doing."

Dr. Helstrom ignored her and kept on ranting. "After that, the university sent me to Feros to excavate a large Prothean burial chamber that had only recently been discovered. My team was just about to excavate the main chamber when suddenly a geth ship drops out the sky and destroys everything! Later I learn that one of the people responsible for destroying that geth ship was none other than _Tali'Zorah!_"

"Look, I really don't-"

"Because of you my research was lost and I was denied tenure! My wife left me and my home was foreclosed! I had to take a job in the private sector, doing grunt work for Synthetic Insights on Noveria, a frozen hellhole in the armpit of the galaxy. But I made the best of it! I was close to a breakthrough on AI research that would have allowed us to make a crippling strike against the geth, but while I was away on vacation, some people broke into our offices and shot up the place. My computer, and all the research on it, was completely destroyed! Then, when I looked at the security camera footage, I saw that the one of the people doing the shooting was once again _Tali'Zorah!_"

"If I had known-"

"After that I lost my job, and I became desperate. I took a job during mineral surveys in the Amada System. Boring and monotonous as hell, but what else was left after you had ruined my life? After scanning the planet Alchera we found a large deposit of palladium near the surface, and we set up an extraction operation. But just as we were finishing up this flaming wreckage falls from the sky and obliterates everything! We lost tens of thousands of credits worth of mineral deposits and I very nearly lost my job again. But what should I hear a few days later? That the flaming wreckage I saw was the _SSV Normandy,_ and who should be on board that ship but a certain quarian named _Tali'Zorah!"_

"I don't have time for this-"

"I kept my job, but my bosses showed me how much they thought of me when they sent me to do more mineral scans in some far-off backwater in the Shrike Abyssal. I thought it would be simple. I thought nothing could possibly go wrong, but who should come riding in but _Tali'Zorah,_ making the star go hypernova just to thwart my meagre ambitions! And now you've come here, to _my_ ship, to deliver one, final insult! Maybe you have killed my creations, but before the captain died I acquired all of his command codes. You destroyed my life, Tali'Zorah, and my sanity, and now I shall take immense pleasure in destroying you!"

The _Gelderland_ rocked violently as the noise of the engines suddenly grew louder. "Someone's taken control of the helm!" said Vrael over the radio. "He's sending the ship to a lower altitude!"

Tali looked at the numerous images of Dr. Helstrom all over the monitors. "What are you doing? You're going to destroy yourself as well!"

_"I would gladly die a thousand deaths if it meant destroying you, _Tali'Zorah!" he screamed, followed by a burst of maniacal laughter. His image then vanished.

"Everyone back to our ship, now!"

What most races didn't know was that quarians can move quite quickly, especially the quarian named Tali, who was quite used to things exploding around her. The ship began to heave and shudder as it passed through a crosswind, resulting in a stream of complaints for the computer: _"Warning: Outer hull pressure exceeding 75 megapascals. Hull failure imminent."_

The quickest way back to the airlock was the elevator, and although Tali vaguely remembered someone telling her that one ought to avoid elevators in an emergency, there was really no time for such considerations. The three of them piled in and in spite of the ship's imminent destruction the elevator sped them on their way to their destination without complaint. This was because this particular elevator was made by the galaxy-renowned manufacturer TurboLift, a high-end elevator company based on Earth, but who supplied elevators and related equipment to all Citadel races. They prided themselves in producing elevators that were still capable of functioning even after any structure or building they were installed in had been levelled by a twenty-kiloton nuclear bomb.

"You see, Tali," said Skaal, "people hate you so much that they are willing to destroy themselves to kill you. It's almost a bit...depressing."

There was a sound like an explosion, followed by a sudden roaring noise. _"Warning: Outer hull pressure exceeding 100 megapascals. Hull breaches in sectors 7, 9, and 13. A notice regarding the incompetence of the chief navigator has been logged. Cerberus reminds all employees that failure to meet expected standards of performance will result in harsh penalties."_

The elevator doors opened as the ship continued to jolt and shudder as the gas giant's atmosphere slowly crushed it. Dr. Helstrom continued taunting them over the intercom: "Even if you escape, Tali'Zorah, I'll return in the next life to destroy you! When the Reapers return I shall welcome them with open arms, for they shall bring about your death!"

A few seconds later Vrael, Prazza, and Vaala met up with them, running down the hallway pursued by a horde of bloodthirsty mutants. From where they were it was just a short sprint to the airlock, and to safety. Tali only hoped that the _Maldon_ hadn't already imploded under the immense atmospheric pressure.

"_Warning: Outer hull pressure exceeding 130 megapascals. Hull breaches in sectors 15, 19, and 23."_

Helstrom continued to rant, his tone of voice becoming even more unhinged. "The forces of the universe are arrayed against you, Tali'Zorah! No matter where you go, no matter what you do, you will be destroyed! How many other lives have you ruined? How many millions go to sleep every night cursing your name? There can be only one explanation – that are you Satan, the Prince of Darkness, Iblis, Beelzebub, the very ruler of hell itself made flesh, sent forth to torment all righteous, God-fearing people!"

"_Keelah,_ Tali!" Vrael exclaimed. "You _really_ know how to make people hate you!"

The airlock doors opened and the six quarians nearly tripped over themselves trying to get back on board their own ship. In spite of all the abuse that it had suffered, it was made of sturdy enough stuff to withstand the absurd pressure that was now pressing in from all sides. Even though Vrael was technically their pilot Tali wasn't about to leave anything to chance, so she seated herself at the controls, disengaged the docking clamps, and immediately set the engines to full power. Her heart was pounding with such force it felt like it was going to tear itself from her chest, but there was a part of her, in the very back corner of her mind, that was secretly delighted in the surge of adrenaline that came with all these last-second escapes from certain doom. Perhaps all her time with Shepard had given her a taste for danger.

The atmosphere was so thick at this altitude that they could hardly see anything out the cockpit window, but somewhere below there was a sudden, resounding _boom_ as the _Gelderland_ finally imploded. It was only then that Tali realised they had retrieved absolutely no salvage from the ship whatsoever, and she would probably face another dressing-down from the admiralty board. She would deal with that later, and now she was just content just to catch her breath.

"Well this mission's been a dismal failure," said Vrael, his voice full of disgust. "I've come to expect a very low probability of success on our assignments, Tali!"

At that point in time Tali had absolutely no patience for his complaining. "What? How was I supposed to know that the ship was filled with mutants and some crazy doctor? Why do you keep blaming me for things that are obviously not my fault?"

Vrael didn't answer, and Tali didn't really care to hear his answer anyway. The blue haze of the gas giant soon faded to the familiar void of space, and with catastrophe averted once more Tali handed over control to Vrael and retreated to the captain's quarters, which seemed to get smaller every time she went there. She would never admit it to her fellow quarians, but Tali had gotten used to the space the _Normandy_ had provided, and was beginning to dislike the close confines of most quarian vessels.

In spite of the failure of their mission, she was quite surprised that they had avoided doing anything grossly incompetent for the length of it. She wanted to think that it was a sign they were becoming good at their jobs, but it was far likelier that it was simply the result of there having been less time for them to do anything horrifically stupid.

Exhausted from their ordeal, Tali lay down to rest, and before she knew it she was fast asleep and dreaming. In this dream she was with Shepard again, standing in the engine room of the _Normandy._ There was no one there except the two of them, so she felt no shame in running forward and throwing her arms around him. The destruction of the _Normandy,_ Shepard's death...maybe _that_ had all been a bad dream and _this_ was reality.

"Shepard!" she cried, holding him tightly, as if she never wanted to let him go. "I...I need your help."

"What is it, Tali?" he said, holding her close.

"My team, they're...they're..."

"They're all gibbering idiots?"

"Yes! Oh Shepard, I...I want them to respect to me, to become good crewmen, but...but I don't know how! What must I do?"

"They made up their minds about you before you even set out, Tali. The people who went with me to fight Saren were there because they _wanted_ to be there. You want your crew to be people they don't _want_ to be, Tali, and sometimes there's nothing you can do to change that. But you don't need me to tell you that. You know this is just a dream, and I'm not really here.

"No!" It couldn't be! Not when it felt so right just being here with him now. "I wish I could be with you, Shepard, but...but I know that's impossible..."

"They'd probably say it's impossible to blow up a star and go back in time, too. But look, you better wake up, Tali. I think something bad is going to happen."

She awoke with a jolt, hearing the sounds of her crewmates shouting. After muttering a few curses she stormed into the cockpit, only to find a large vessel rapidly approaching their position. It didn't look like any ship Tali had ever seen, with a long, sweeping bow that made it look more like an old nautical vessel than a spaceship. Its hull was painted black all over, giving the impression that light simply fell into it. The only marking was a large skull and crossbones painted on side, an insignia she was unfamiliar with.

"They just appeared out of nowhere," said Vrael. "I've never seen-"

He didn't finish, as the black ship let loose a shot from one of its mass accelerators. It slammed into the _Maldon_ with enough force to knock everyone standing off their feet. The navigational console exploded in a shower of sparks, making Tali why ships always seemed to route thousands of amps of electricity through the computer consoles.

As she climbed to her feet Vrael frantically tried to pilot the ship away, but he efforts were in vain. "Kinetic barriers down and engines are off-line!"

_With _one_ hit?_ she thought. Perhaps it was not surprising, given the age of their ship, but it was a rather ignoble fate if they were all to die at this moment in time. And that seemed rather likely, as their ship had no weapons and was now completely at the mercy of their attackers. Tali flashed back to the destruction of the_ Normandy - _the screaming and shouting as the crew piled into the escape pods, the fire and explosions, looking frantically among the survivors for Shepard but not finding him... Was she going to die this day? If she did, would there be an afterlife? Would Shepard be there? Did humans and quarians even _go_ to the same afterlife?

"They're moving to board!" Vrael cried. That was hardly better than certain death, as it meant their attackers were probably slavers or pirates, who would doubtless have nothing good in store for them.

As the black ship docked with the _Maldon,_ the six of them waited at the airlock with weapons drawn. Outside they could hear the clanking and groaning sounds as the two ships came together, followed by the faint hiss of the other ship's airlock doors opening. They had sealed their own airlock, but a moment later there was a shower of sparks as someone on the other side began cutting through. Tali gripped her shotgun tightly in her hands, swearing that she would take down as many of them as she could before they killed her. She had heard enough stories about slavers to know that dying was a far, far more preferable fate than being captured by them.

The airlock doors were blown aside, and when Tali saw their attackers she hesitated for a second. They were not batarians, as she had been expecting, but humans, albeit very strangely dressed humans. Their clothes were ragged and filthy, looking nothing like what she had ever seen humans wearing before. Her surprise lasted only a split-second, however, before she and the rest of her team began firing.

It was all for naught, as a glowing blue barrier went up in front of their attackers, deflecting all of their bullets. Tali recognised it as the unique glow that accompanied the use of biotic powers, which meant they were now even more screwed than they had been just seconds before.

"Yer weapons be worth naught 'gainst me biotics!" came a gruff voice. "Ye best be puttin' em' away if ye wished to be spared from Davy Joneses locker!"

The rest of her team complied, and while Tali wasn't willing surrender so easily, she had no choice in the matter as her weapon was suddenly wrenched from her hands by a biotic blast.

Standing amongst their shabbily-dressed attackers was a tall, slender man, wearing a red tailcoat over a white waistcoat and trousers. Upon his head hewore a strange, triangular hat, marked with the same skull and crossbones insignia that they had seen on the ship.

"Yarr, my name be Captain Redcoat, and ye be now prisoners of the _Queen Anne's Bosom, _flagship of the Pirates of Pestulon!"

"No..." Juodaan gasped. "Not the Pirates of Pestulon!"

"Ya-har!" said Captain Redcoat with a laugh. "In the flesh! Now ye chumbuckets better be coming with us, before ye be strung up on the yardarm, arrr!"

"Why does these humans all talk like idiots?" Vrael whispered.

"I don't know," said Tali. "Must be some obscure Earth dialect."

One of the pirates glanced over at her. "Quarians, yarrggh! And there be a fine wench among them!"

Redcoat stopped and glared at the man who had just spoken. "Nay, ye bilge rat! Ye be saying 'arrr or 'yarr', but never 'yarrrgh!' That be the sound ye make when ye sit on a belayin' pin!"

Tali wasn't sure what exactly was happening or whose these people were, only that nothing good was going to come of this. "Who are the Pirates of Pestulon?" she asked.

"They're the most feared pirate band in the Terminus Systems," Juodaan answered softly. "They're the only human pirate band that can compete with the batarians."

_That's just wonderful,_ she thought. Whoever these people were, it was clear that once again she and her crew were in dire straits, a frustrating – if by now totally predictable – occurrence.


	6. Justicarmageddon

Chapter 6 – Justicarmageddon

* * *

The interior of the _Queen Anne's Bosom_ was very much like that of a quarian ship, being cramped, cluttered, and dimly lit. There were all manner of obvious makeshift repair jobs done to the ship, although it had not been done with the skill same as a quarian might do it, giving the vessel a ramshackle, cobbled-together appearance. Captain Redcoat's men pushed them forward through a narrow hallway lined with overhead cargo nets and hammocks, eventually bringing them to a large, open area that Tali guessed had once been the ship's mess hall. It was filled with the same dishevelled men dressed in dirty clothing, and Tali was beginning to suspect that they made themselves look like that on purpose.

"Ye be now prisoners of the Pirates of Pestulon!" the captain declared. "There be no escape now; we sank that lubberly ketch ye be calling a 'ship.'"

She took that to mean they had destroyed the _Maldon_, which filled her with a momentary pang of grief. As old and outdated as it was, she had become rather attached to it, especially after all it had been through.

"And if any of ye chumbuckets try to escape, we'll make you walk the plank," the captain continued.

Another make spoke up. "Uh, captain, don't you mean 'throw them out the airlock?'"

In a flash Captain Redcoat drew his pistol, spun around, and shot the offending crewmen squarely in his right knee, causing him to fall the ground screaming. "Yarr!" the captain bellowed. "Here on this ship we be followin' the proper terminology!"

"You can't do this!" Prazza hissed. "You don't know who you're dealing with here!"

The captain was unimpressed by Prazza's bravado. "Still your tongue, whelp! Here on the _Queen Anne's Bosom,_ there be only one rule: what the cap'n wants, the cap'n gets, and I got six quarians who are going to worth quite a few doubloons once we put ashore."

"Oh _yeah?"_ said Prazza, stepping forward. "Well on the Migrant Fleet we also only got one rule: you don't _fuck_ with _The Praz'!"_

The captain raised an eyebrow. "Yarr, were ye dropped on your head as a lad?"

"You're probably right," said Vrael under his breath.

"Take them, but bring this one to the captain's cabin," Redcoat said, gesturing towards Tali. "Me pirate sense be telling me that she be the one in charge. But first, I be thinkin' an introduction be warranted!"

He walked to the front of the chamber, while all the men gathered there went silent. "We be the Pirates of Pestulon! For years we have sailed the seas, takin' what we can, and givin' nothing back. We be crossin' swords with all them who would disgrace the name o' Blackbeard; they who don' be speakin' the pirate tongue, who don't be flyin' the pirate colours! We be the Pirates of Pestulon, and _we be bringin' scurvy back!"_

The hall erupted into cheers and shouts as the captain's men led the rest of her squad away. Prazza continued shouting empty threats. Tali was beginning to think that she was still dreaming, or that her experiences had finally pushed her over the edge into insanity. Surely people as ridiculous as these "pirates" couldn't possibly exist in reality. Whatever the reason, escape truly seemed impossible now, as they had no ship of their own and there was no way they'd be able to seize control of this one.

The "captain's cabin" did not look like anything that belonged on a spacefaring vessel. The walls and floors were panelled with wood, and the room was illuminated by what looked like ancient oil lamps. The captain's work desk was covered in what appeared to be scrolls of parchment or paper, displaying maps of the galaxy that had been drawn by hand. Upon the walls were various weapons, ranging from sabres and cutlasses to what Tali guessed were some sort of primitive firearms.

Redcoat quickly shut the door to the cabin. "Finally, I can drop this charade," he said, no longer speaking in that absurd accent. "You wouldn't believe how quickly _that_ gets old..."

"What do you mean?" she asked nervously, still believing that absolutely nothing good was going to happen to her and her crew in the near future.

"We started this pirate gang, thinking we'd be like the old seafaring pirates on Earth, or least how they were depicted in the vids. It was all silly fun at first, but then my men started taking things a bit too seriously. They began 'talking pirate' all the time, and then they started spacing anyone who didn't 'act the part.' It was madness, and I knew they'd kill me if I didn't play along."

Tali wasn't exactly convinced by his words. "So you don't really _want_ to be a pirate, then?"

"Look, being a pirate's fun for the first few months, but after that it gets old...fast. Sometimes you want to spend your creds on something other than ale and whores, which is the only thing the men on this boat will let you spend them on. Then there's that whole pointless bit where we take a stash of credit chits, bury them on some planet, then lose the map to it. And have you ever tried to keep a parrot alive on a spaceship? It's a bloody pain!"

"If you don't want to be a pirate, then why not let us go?"

Redcoat shook his head. "I'd like to, but my men won't allow it. I can tell you, however, that my second-in-command Bristol will try to sell you to a nasty lot of batarians on Omega. Quarians fetch good prices on the slave market."

"So you won't help us?" she said angrily.

"Actually, this situation might finally help me get free of my crew. Everyone on this ship knows who are you are, Tali, and they aren't going to take the woman who helped defeat Saren lightly. For that reason I'll send most of my men to 'escort' you to the rendezvous point, and after they're ashore I'll take control of the ship and get the hell out. Of course that still leaves you with my men, but I'll prepare an extra-large ration of rum before we reach Omega. Part of being a pirate, you see, is an unquenchable thirst for alcohol. With any luck my men will be too pissed to shoot straight and you'll able to escape from their clutches. That leaves the batarians, but I'm sure you've faced worse people in your time."

She was still suspicious, but there was something about this man that Tali want to trust him. Perhaps it was because he appeared to be (relatively) sane amidst the ocean of madness they were now floundering in. "All right, maybe I believe you."

"Good. I'm a bit concerned about the rest of your men, though, in particular Prazza. Is he 'the' Prazza?"

"You've heard of him?" she said.

"Well I don't know, maybe it was just a bloke with the same name, but one of things about having a bunch of men in space is that they have...um..._certain needs_ that cannot be fulfilled on a ship full of men. When we pull into port they usually spend creds at the nearest whorehouse, but between ports of call the men have to rely on...ahem..._electronic_ _relationship guides_ for satisfaction. Well, _Fornax_ is rather popular among the crew, but there was one issue that featured 'The Prazza'. I won't disgust you with the details of his involvement, but that issue drove three of my men to insanity and caused another to tear out his own eyes. When he showed up here I couldn't imagine it was the same person."

"I'm afraid it is," she replied. "I don't know what, exactly, he did, but I get the feeling I don't want to know."

Redcoat nodded. "Trust me, you don't. Now, as I said, the exchange will happen on Omega, which means no one's really going to care when people start shooting up the place. My men won't let you have any weapons, obviously, but they're not going to take away your omni-tool. I assume you've got some kind of overload routine on it?"

She crossed her arms. "Yes, but I can't believe you're willing to let all your men die!"

"These aren't my men, Tali. I wasn't even the first captain of this ship. You see, there's an old pirate law that says that the only way to become a pirate captain is to kill the current captain. I accidentally backed up our old captain with a forklift, and so by pirate law I had to take his place. Wasn't my choice, but the men insisted, so here I am. Personally I'd rather do smuggling; much less chance of dying horribly."

When she returned to her crew, she found that Prazza was still howling in protest at being in captivity. Vrael, Skaal, and Vaala were resigned to their fate, while Juodaan was staggering about, obviously drunk again. Tali would later learn that he had programmed his suit to administer alcohol during any time of stress. At the rate at which they were encountering stressful situations, Juodaan was well on his way to liver failure in a few weeks, and that was taking into consideration the hardy quarian liver, which was much resilient to prolonged drinking than a human one.

* * *

If the galaxy had an armpit, and that armpit had an armpit of its own, then Omega would be the armpit of that armpit. Built from the hollowed-out husk of asteroid, Omega was a haven for criminals, assassins, pirates, slavers, mercenaries, thugs, smugglers, tax-dodgers, and jaywalkers. In short, the most wretched hive of violence, misery, and despair in the galaxy, second only to Detroit. There was no government on Omega, nor had there ever been one, with only various mercenary bands providing any form of law and order.

Flying over Omega revealed a spiralling array of structures built haphazardly atop one another, with no semblance of order or planning been put into them. Tali knew of this place, as it was a common destination for quarians on Pilgrimage, but given its reputation she had chosen to go to the Citadel instead. "Walk down any back alley on Omega, and you can find almost anything," someone had once said. What they omitted was that "anything" usually meant stabbings, shootings, muggings, or some combination of the three.

The _Queen Anne's Bosom_ pulled into port, and true to the captain's word, the men sent to escort to them to the meeting with the slavers were all so thoroughly inebriated that they could barely stagger off their own ship. All of them had guns, unfortunately, and Tali knew that there were few things more dangerous than a drunken man with a gun.

Even inside her environmental suit, being on Omega made Tali feel dirty. Everything had a layer of grime on it, and rubbish was strewn about the streets and alleyways, and if that were not bad enough, there were a number of people lying on the ground, either passed-out drunk or dead and left to rot. Vorcha scavengers skittered about in shadows, hissing and snarling at anyone passing by. Looking at the picture of wretchedness before her, Tali did not dare turn on her suit's olfactory filters. In some ways Omega was like the flotilla, in that much of it was cramped and crowded, but that was where the similarities came to an end. Everyone in the Migrant Fleet worked towards a common goal, but here everyone was out for himself.

There were around fifteen men with them, all of them drunk out of their minds. "You see how much they despise us, Tali?" said Skaal. "They must inebriate themselves to even be able to bear our presence."

"I can't believe they gave them liquor and didn't extend the same courtesy to me!" Juodaan lamented.

As they walk along the filth-encrusted streets of Omega, Tali could not help noticing that two of the pirates behind her were quite obviously ogling her.

"Yarr...that quarian wench..."

"Yarr...that ass..."

"Yarr...them hips..."

"Yarr...that everything..."

Ahead was a group of five batarians, all heavily armed. The Migrant Fleet had many dealings with their kind, both for good and for ill, but for most people batarians were little more than thugs and mercenaries. There was a seething hatred between them and humans, a result of humans settling in areas claimed by the batarians, which combined with the general lawlessness of Omega meant that racial tensions more often than not erupted into violence.

Bristol, Captain Redcoat's XO, fumbled his way forward. "Six quarians, as we promised."

One of the batarians stepped forward to look them over. "These better be smarter than the last batch you sent me. You humans don't know anything about how to pick good slaves."

"Yeah, yeah, just hand over the creds so we can get off this rock, or get our rocks off, either one works."

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then, the batarian's head exploded.

Everyone instantly raised their weapons, frantically looking about for the shooter. Out of the corner of her eye Tali saw a flash of red moving in the distance, and split-second later the tell-tale glow of biotic power. The batarians were suddenly thrown into the air, rendered helpless by a singularity; a power Tali remembered Liara using to great effect in combat situations. Several more shots rang out, blasting the helpless slavers into oblivion. It was then that Tali got a look at the attacker: an asari clad in some sort of red scale armour.

Her body surged with biotic power as she calmly approached the pirates. "Die, criminal scum!" she cried as she sent one of the pirates flying into the air.

Seeing an opportunity, Tali brought up her omni-tool and selected "Sabotage" from the list of possible actions, which would overheat a target's weapon. She targeted one of the pirates, imitated the program sequence, and then immediately bolted as her target's weapon was a grenade launcher. A few seconds later the gun exploded, setting off the ammunition and blowing the pirate clean in two.

There were still about ten pirates left, but whoever this asari was clearly didn't consider that to be long odds. She ran headlong into them, tossing them left and right, and the fact that all of them were raging drunk meant that they were barely able to aim their guns, let alone fire them. In less than five seconds all the pirates except Bristol were either dead by gunshot or had had the majority of their bones shattered, and Bristol himself was now on his back, having been throw down by a burst of biotic energy.

"I am Reina, a servant of the justicar code. Your ass is six months overdue, and I'm here to collect!"

She drew her pistol and pointed at the helpless man, but refrained from firing it. Tali noticed that a rather frustrated expression was beginning to appear on her face.

"Whoever you are," said Vrael, "umm...aren't you going to shoot him?"

The asari glanced over at the quarians. "The code of the justicar clearly states that, before killing someone, I am required to say something totally _ice cold._ But I can't think of anything!"

"Are ye for real, ya' dumb bint?" said Bristol, staring up at her.

There was another pause of several seconds, when suddenly she cried, "The goose is loose, bitch!" and shot Bristol right between the eyes.

Tali and her crew were shaken by the sudden outburst of violence, but it seemed that this asari was on their side. What was it she had called herself? A "justicar?" Tali vaguely remembered hearing that term somewhere, although she did not recall what it meant.

"'The goose is loose?'" said Reina, shaking her head. "What the hell kind of line is that? What was I _thinking?_ And now that he's dead I've got to come up with another line."

"What are you talking about?" Juodaan asked, having been roused from his drunken torpor by all the action.

"The code of the justicar also compels me to say some kind of glib, witty one-liner right after I kill someone with my _righteous fury._ But I shot this one in the head...and I can't think of any lines for that. See, if I had blown his head right off, I might say 'he always had a head for trouble,' or if I had ripped him in two with my biotics, I could say 'he's half the man he used to be.' But a shot to the head? I guess that makes him a lead...head? But that's just _lame!" _Finally she gave up and holstered her weapon. "Aw, screw it. No one's going to care if I violate that one part of the justicar code, anyway."

"So, uh, who are you, exactly?" said Vrael. "And why are you helping us?"

"I am a justicar," said Reina, "an ancient sect of asari warriors dedicated to hunting down evildoers and kicking their asses in every way they can be kicked. If there's an ass in this galaxy I cannot kick, then I have not found it and kicked it yet. Now come on, there's a great club not far from here. I'll buy you all some drinks."

That was enough to get Juodaan moving, although Tali was still trying to process everything that had happened. What was it about the universe that made chaos and mayhem follow her wherever she went? Shepard had been the same way, and she realised to her horror that perhaps, with his death, Shepard had passed on his "aura of chaos" to her. She was certainly imitating his tendency to have things explode around her, to say the least.

"Those were Captain Redcoat's men," said Reina, leading them down the street. "Crazy bastard came to me and asked to get rid of them. Said he wanted to do something less 'silly' and he needed me to deal with his men before he could give up being a pirate. It's a good thing I didn't end up fighting him; his biotics are the strongest I've ever seen in a human. No way any of them gets like that just through accidental eezo exposure; someone had to _make_ him like that."

"But if he's so powerful, why didn't he just take out his men himself?" Tali asked.

Reina shrugged. "I said he was powerful; I didn't say he wasn't _lazy_."

The club they were heading to was called "Afterlife" and from the outside they could hear the throbbing bass of the music playing inside. There was a lengthy queue at the front the door, but Reina must have known someone there, because the bouncer simply let her and Tali's crew past without so much as a word.

"Everyone here respects a justicar," Reina said. "They know that if anyone so much as _litters_ a justicar will tear out their arms and beat them to death with them. _That's_ how hardcore we are."

Tali had briefly been to a few clubs when she was on the Citadel, but had never spent much time there. Still, she found the pulsating bass of dance music vaguely alluring, but the music playing inside Afterlife was something else entirely. It consisted of heavy, thrashing guitars, machine-gun drumming, and a krogan singing with such guttural growls it did not seem like the sound any organic creature could make. As they walked into the upper floor of the club, Tali saw that the entire band was krogan and was called "Berserker Bloodrage Disembowelment Death Squad."

"Aw yeah!" Prazza exclaimed. "Krogan death metal! I _love_ this stuff!"

Reina and the six quarians sat down at the bar. Tali did not like this place. It reminded her far too much of Chora's Den on the Citadel, only this particular establishment was even worse. This was the kind of bar where fights were the rule, not the exception, and where all manner of illicit transactions took place. The omnipresent red lighting did little to help; it simply made everything look evil and threatening, and some maniac had installed a series of holographic projectors around the club that made it look as if the whole place were _on fire._

Tali was shaken from her thoughts by an argument brewing between Prazza and his girlfriend. "No, Prazza," she said, "you are _not_ going to headbang, you hear me? The last time you did that you ended up breaking your helmet and being down for two weeks with an infection!"

"You never let me have any fun!" he whined. "This is the first time I've had a chance to see krogan death metal live!"

"Prazza, if you get up from this barstool, I swear I will-"

"Just watch me!"

In defiance of Vaala, he stood up and walked over to where a group of people were dancing. Then he began to "headbang," although to Tali it was less like dancing and more like he was suffering a seizure or being zapped with thousands of volts of electricity. He thrashed his head up and down violently, not even managing to do so in time with the music, looking like a complete git all the while. Quarians traditionally regarded dancing as one of their highest forms of cultural expression, but what Prazza was presently engaging in was nothing more than a mockery of that art form.

As he was flailing about he happened to bump into a turian walking by, spilling his drinks all over the floor. "Watch it, quarian!" he growled, grabbing Prazza's arm. "You owe me 'nother round of drinks!"

If Prazza had any wit or sense, he would have apologised and bought the turian his drinks. But he possessed neither, so he pushed the turian back and readied his fists. "You want a piece of me, turian?" he said. "You don't know what you're dealing with! I'm the goddamn _Prazza! WAAAGH!"_

Prazza's skill in hand-to-hand combat was about on par with that of a drunken volus, but the turian had not counted on his suicidal bravado. Expecting some good old fashioned fisticuffs, what the turian got instead was a swift head-butt from Prazza, and with the hard material of his helmet the turian was momentarily stunned. Prazza then charged head first into the turian, knocking him to the floor and continually pummelling him until the club's security pried the two of them apart. Tali looked upon it all with detached dismay. Would Shepard's crew have ever behaved like this? There was that one time he punched out that reporter, but everyone agreed she had it coming.

Prazza returned to his chair, his ego massively boosted by his victory over the turian, which was quickly deflated by the lengthy dressing-down Vaala gave him.

"Quarians!" the barkeep said, finally getting around to serving them. "If you're looking to strip-mine this rock, you're a few thousand years too late. Now what it'll be-...wait..._Prazza?"_

He glanced up at the bartender. "Do I know you?"

"No, but I know you! I used to work in an adult vid store down on the lower markets. I'll never forget that issue of _Fornax_ that had you in it – man that was _fucked up!_ I wasn't aware that you could even _do_ that with an elcor!"

"You did _what?"_ Vaala exclaimed.

"I...I think you're mistaking me for someone else," Prazza said, clearly embarrassed.

The barkeep was not fooled for a second. "No, I'd recognise you at a hundred paces. It's pretty hard to forget after seeing what you did...damn that was messed!"

Vaala was now livid with rage. "_You..._you posed in a _porno_ magazine?"

The barkeep laughed. "Oh, he did more than just pose, lady!"

Now Prazza was even more on the defensive. "I...I was broke. I needed the money!"

He and his girlfriend continued to have it out, arguing loudly and making Tali glad she was not in Vaala's position. She didn't know much about the woman, but she sympathised with her for having Prazza as a romantic companion. That sympathy instantly evaporated when she realised that Vaala was with Prazza by choice, and who would ever choose to be with him? Maybe she was being closed-minded about it. Tali wanted to think that there was someone for everyone in the galaxy, no matter how stupid or unpleasant they were.

"You look thirsty," said the barkeep. "You want a round of drinks, I take it?"

"Damn right I'm thirsty!" said Reina, banging her fist on the counter. "Thirsty..._for justice!_ And, uh, some drinks for my quarian friends, here, too, I guess..."

Quarian taste in liquor tended to be rather simple: they liked it strong, although not nearly as strong as krogan preferences ran. One quarian ship had managed to achieved what many thought impossible: a drink that was 500% alcohol. It was called "Neutronium," with its makers claiming that it was "distilled from neutron-degenerate matter" and "guaranteed to destroy all capacity for rational thought in a single shot."

As the barkeep poured their drinks, Tali noticed that an asari clad in black leather was now seated next to Prazza. What was strange was how she had appeared to come out of nowhere, and now seemed very interested in her crewman.

"I'm Morinth, and you're the most interesting person here tonight, Prazza," she said in a tone of voice that made it clear what was on her mind.

"Damn straight I am! That turian should have known what would happen if he messed with _The Praz'!_"

"What do you think of the music here?" said the asari. "I love death metal...emphasis on the death."

"I know!" Prazza replied with intense enthusiasm. "When my favourite solo comes on, everyone looks at me like I'm possessed!"

The strange woman leaned in closer to him, all the while Prazza's girlfriend was oblivious to her. "You ever listen to black metal from the Earth country of Norway? It gets into my brain and totally destroys it."

Prazza was now getting even more excited, convinced that he had found his soul mate. "Of course! I love all the screaming, the wailing guitars, the 'all hail Satan!' lyrics, and all that bit with the arson and the church-burnings and the murdering..."

Tali ignored them. She set her suit to block out the loud music, which was beginning to give her a headache. When she returned to the fleet she hoped that there would be no more missions or assignments for a while. It would be nice to go back to her usual routine aboard the _Neema,_ without having to worry about madness erupting around her or some terrible catastrophe befalling her. It might be boring or mundane after all she'd been through, but boredom was beginning to seem a much better option than being attacked by pirates or narrowly escaping exploding stars.

Her crew were all talking amongst themselves, excluding her completely from their conversation. She began thinking about how she was going to explain everything to the admirals this time. Not only had she failed to obtain any salvage from the Cerberus vessel, she had lost her own ship as well, which would definitely not go over well with the board. Ships were their most valuable resource, and anyone who lost one would face harsh censure. She could only imagine what her father would think, if he even bothered to speak with her. He was involved in some secret research that he refused to reveal anything about – a fact that disturbed Tali greatly because quarians so rarely kept secrets from one another, _especially_ from family members.

She looked over at her teammates and saw that Prazza and that asari were now gone. "What happened to Prazza?" she asked.

Reina glanced about the club. "Oh, he must have gone off with Morinth," she said with a shrug.

"He _what?"_ Vaala exclaimed. "That two-timing bastard! When he comes back here I'm going to tear his throat out!"

"Wait," said Tali to Reina. "You know that woman?"

She nodded. "Morinth? Yeah, I've seen her around here a few times. Seems like an all right person."

Tali sighed. Now they would have to wait around for Prazza to finish his little "rendezvous" before they could get off this miserable station. And knowing Prazza, he probably wouldn't follow proper sterilisation procedure, either.

The next half hour passed by in a blur, partly owing to the unexpected strength of whatever it was Tali had been drinking. She was a picture of sobriety compared to the rest of her people, however, who were all staggering out of Afterlife, barely able to stand. Juodaan had actually passed out and required Vrael and Skaal to drag him along by his arms, and in her inebriation Vaala was ranting about all the horrible things she was going to do to Prazza when he returned.

"I've got a ship near the docking area," said Reina. "I'll give you a lift back to your fleet just as soon as your friend Prazza returns."

Vrael laughed. "It'll take him no more than a minute at the most."

Juodaan appeared to rouse from his drunkenness. "Wh...what's going on here?" he mumbled. "Why is everyone standing around me..."

Tali crossed her arms. "You're drunk. Again."

"And you're ugly! Ha!" he said, his words nearly incoherent.

"When we return to the flotilla, I am going to speak with the captain of the Lumikko and ask him why he allows a drunken sot like you on his ship!" Tali wasn't exactly drunk, but the drink had lowered her inhibitions to the point where she began unloading her frustrations onto her crew.

"Give it a rest, Tali," Vrael said. "Juodaan may have his vices, but look at you! At least he didn't keep gushing over some alien captain for weeks after he got back from his Pilgrimage. And he wasn't the one who withheld the location of the _Normandy_ wreck out of some misguided sense of duty."

"And you!" she snapped, pointing her finger right at him. "You and Prazza gainsay nearly every one of my orders, you blame me for things clearly not my fault, and you keep defending people when I have every right to reprimand them! Let me ask you, Vrael, were you sent to ensure that I failed every task assigned to me?"

He did not answer for a moment. "So _that's_ how you feel, Tali. It gives me such confidence to know how little our leader thinks of us."

If Tali knew more about ancient human mythology, she might have likened herself to Sisyphus right about now. When they got back to the fleet, she had resolved to _beg_ the admirals not to send her another mission. Spending any more time with her "crew" was surely hazardous to one's sanity.

Just then they caught sight of Prazza running towards them at full speed. When he caught up with them he was wheezing and panting, while Vaala just stood there, arms crossed and tapping her foot.

"And just _what_ were you up to, Prazza?" she said.

"It...it was horrible!" he said between breaths. "I go up to her place, and...and she's got all these knives and swords hanging on the walls, and she starts going on about how much she likes dominating people and seeing the expressions on their faces right before they die. Then she gets close to me, and...and suddenly her eyes go all black and she starts saying things like 'Say you'll do anything for me; that you'd kill for me.' I just looked at her said, 'Say, that thing with your eyes, that's really creepy. Could you not do that?' Then she got mad and threw me out! Honestly, I don't get women at all!"

"No, you don't!" Vaala said. "We're through!"

"What? No, I just...I mean I didn't..."

"You went off with some asari bitch right in front of my eyes! I'd really like to hear your explanation for that one!"

"But...she...she was hot..."

"Ugh! Let's just...get off this rock!"

Tali could not agree more.


	7. Gotta Collect Em' All

Chapter 7 – Gotta Collect Em' All

* * *

With six quarians, Reina's shuttle was understandably cramped. The lack of space was more than offset by the sheer opulence of the vehicle, which was made by some high-end asari manufacturer who hand-built every one of their ships. The seats were made from leather and the interior was furnished with some sort of wood that was the colour of blood, and while Tali could hardly believe it, the ship ran even quieter than the _Normandy._ It was almost like being in a vacuum, which only made things uncomfortable. Working in a noisy environment meant there were few opportunities for awkward silences, but the sheer quietness of this vessel made it agonising.

The source of this awkward silence was that Prazza and Vaala had just broken up over his dalliance with that asari in the bar. Both of them were seated next to each other, and in the confines of the shuttle there was no room for them to move apart. They sat there, looking away from each other, both trying their hardest to ignore the hatred seething between them.

"So," Vrael said, "what's it like, being a justicar?" Tali welcomed his attempt to put an end to the horrid silence.

"_Awesome!"_ Reina exclaimed. "You get to run around the galaxy, kicking all kinds of ass, and everyone respects you."

"If you don't mind me asking," Vrael continued, "you seem a little...young...for a justicar. I've read a bit about them, and most of them don't take their vows until well after their maiden years have passed."

Reina fidgeted. "Well, _yes,_ but...I...I was chosen from an early age due to my...exceptional talent!"

"And far be it from me to criticise how you go about your duties, but this ship seems a bit...extravagant...for a justicar. I always thought that justicars forswore most material possessions and followed an austere lifestyle. And I thought justicars only operated in asari space; you know, to avoid diplomatic incidents and all that?"

She turned her head and glared at Vrael. "All right, look. I'm not _really _a justicar; I just saw the vids they make about them and thought it'd be cool to be one. But then I found out that two out of five initiates don't survive the training, and they make you give up nearly everything you own! My father got me this ship for my fiftieth birthday; no way I'm giving that up! So I decided I'd just go about the Terminus Systems, acting like a justicar. You'd be surprised how many people don't question you if you just act like you know what you're doing."

"Well, thank you for rescuing us, anyway," Tali said. "Our whole mission has been a disaster."

Reina glanced over at her. "You're Tali'Zorah, aren't you? I heard about you; you were with Commander Shepard when he killed Saren. You're probably the most famous quarian in the galaxy, or shall I say the _only_ famous one. Your kind aren't exactly well-liked by most people." She was wrong about Tali being the only or most famous quarian, as that particular honour was reserved for the electronica duo called "Fatuous Miscreants," who were reputed to create the hottest techno beats anywhere in the galaxy.

"It must be nice to belong to a species that has the respect of the entire galaxy."

She laughed. "You mean us asari? Look, that's just an image we cultivate for the other races. You might think less of me for running around pretending to be a justicar, but that's a damn sight better than what other asari are doing! Working as strippers or hookers, or going out and joining some bloodthirsty pack of mercenaries – that's the true face of our species. It's a good thing we inspire such lust in other races, otherwise we would have been wiped out long ago."

"At least people don't hate you the moment they see you," Tali said. "People look at us quarians, and all they think about is how we created the geth or how we're all thieves and beggars who consume resources and give nothing in return."

"Your people just can't catch a break, huh? But there's something different about you, Tali'Zorah. You could say it's your 'aura' for lack of a better word. I get the feeling you've done impossible things."

"You mean like stopping Saren and his geth?"

"No, that was merely _improbable,_" said Reina, shaking her head. "What I meant was, things that are literally _impossible_. Seeing into black holes, going backwards and forwards at the same time, that sort of thing. I must say, you're playing with fire, Tali. The universe doesn't take kindly to people disobeying the laws of physics."

"Maybe that's why all our missions have gone so badly as of late."

She shrugged. "That, or your team is a bunch of intellectual midgets."

"What did you call us?" said Prazza, grabbing the back of the pilot's chair and sticking his head up front.

"I said you're all delightfully free of the vagaries of intelligence," Reina replied.

"Oh, thank you," he said, returning to his seat.

* * *

After returning to the flotilla and saying their farewell to Reina, Tali steeled her nerves for the inevitable meeting with the admirals. This time things were a little more promising, as she would debriefed by both Zaal'Koris and Han'Gerrel. Koris was still the insufferable jerk he always, but Gerrel's history with Tali's father made him considerably friendlier. It was no surprise, then, that both men hated each other, as they had diametrically opposed opinions over how to deal with the geth. Koris wanted to make peace with them, which was ridiculous, because how did you make peace with something that tried to kill you the moment you saw it? Gerrel wanted to take back the homeworld by force, which was an admirable goal, but one that had very little chance of success given the state of the quarian fleet.

"So, if I'm reading this mission report correctly," said Koris, "you were sent to the _Gelderland_ with orders to salvage whatever you could. Instead, you caused the ship to explode. Then your own ship exploded. Along with how you made that star explode, I'm beginning to suspect, Tali'Zorah, that you have some sort of fetish for explosions!"

"Now be reasonable, Koris," said Gerrel, the hatred in his voice clear. "Technically, the _Gelderland_ imploded, not exploded..."

Koris waved his hand in dismissal. "It doesn't matter! Tali, you have completely and utterly failed to accomplish even half of what we sent you to do. I see no reason to give her any further assignments outside the fleet, no matter what Rael'Zorah says."

She knew she had to respect the admirals and the immense burden they shouldered, but this was too much. "How was I supposed to succeed, admiral, when I have a crew that does everything they can to sabotage the mission?"

Koris crossed his arms. "If you cannot obtain the loyalty of your men, Tali, then that only proves you are unfit for any leadership role."

"That's too far!" Gerrel protested. "I've read the dossiers on her crew, Koris, and they're the worst bunch of incompetents and good-for-nothings on the whole fleet! One of them hasn't even finished his bloody Pilgrimage yet! Now you tell me how she's supposed to get anything done with those sort of people at her back. It obvious you think Tali'Zorah's an idiot, and you've saddled her with a crew of morons just to watch her fail."

"I don't think Tali is an idiot, Gerrel, it's just that everything she says and does is wrong."

"You said it yourself, Koris, things tend to explode around her. Maybe we should send her on military assignments. Her experience in fighting Saren and the geth is a definite asset."

Zaal'Koris was going to have none of it. "Absolutely not. The best predictor of future performance is past performance, and judging by what I've seen, sending Tali anywhere will cause nothing but havoc. And besides, there are no major threats to fleet at present, and I can think of no pressing matters at that 'deserve' Tali'Zorah's special brand of attention."

Finally one of them addressed her. "I'm afraid he's right, Tali," said Gerrel. "There's nothing at the moment that is in need of your particular skill set."

"Then I should thank you for giving me some time to rest, then," she said, her tone curt and barely polite.

"Indeed," said Koris as she left the meeting room. "Try not to blow up the _Neema_ while you're at it."

The last sound Tali heard as she walked out of the room sounded suspiciously like Zaal'Koris getting hit over the head with a pipe wrench.

* * *

Tali's living space on the _Neema_ was no different from that of most other quarians. Being an admiral's daughter might have entitled her to somewhat better quarters, but she would have none of it. There few people more despised among quarians than those who deliberately tried to elevate themselves above others by amassing material possessions or wealth. She distinctly remembered one incident where some quarian captain had been interviewed on a conservative talk show, where he was asked to explain how quarians lived aboard the flotilla. As he went into detail about how all quarians shared goods in common and worked towards the greater good, the host's face became angrier and angrier until he started sputtering, "You mean you're...you're...s...soc..." His lips and tongue had contorted in an attempt to speak the first barbaric syllables of the word that was an anathema to conservatives everywhere: "Socialist!" After that the interview was reduced to a racist rant by the host about how quarians were all wretched thieves who took jobs away from honest, hard-working folk, and how they might not be so poor if they worked a damn day in their lives.

Her "quarters;" if they could be called that, were little bigger than a typical office cubicle, containing nothing more than a bed, a terminal where she could work, and a small chest containing all of her worldly possessions, which were few. There was little privacy here, save for a bit of fabric covering the entrance, and if anyone wanted to steal something from her they would have little problem. Since most goods were held in common, however, theft was rare, and even desperate people would be unwilling to stoop to such lowly acts.

Given the rather precarious nature of their existence, most quarians had little "time off" as there was always something that needed to be done. Tali's captain had granted her a few days to rest, and while at first she insisted it wasn't necessary she soon realised that it would do her no harm to have a little reprieve. Much of the first day was spent browsing extranet news sites, and everything she saw on those depressed her. The whole galaxy was still bickering over trivialities and each species was still fighting over its pathetic stick in the dirt. They all thought the Reaper threat died with Sovereign, but they were wrong. Only the human councillor, Anderson, knew what was really happening, but amidst a sea of deniers he appeared less like a wise man and more like a raving, ranting fool.

The rest of the news was just as dismal. After the destruction of the _Normandy, _the Alliance had promised a full investigation, but nothing had ever come of it. Tali knew that the Reapers were behind it, and Shepard would have thought the same, but no one cared. Everything Shepard had fought for was being quietly filed away and forgotten. He deserved better than that. Everyone who had served about the _Normandy_ deserved better. Yet she was powerless to do anything about it, so she chided herself for dwelling on such things.

What she began looking up next was almost as depressing. Ever since Tali began noticing her feelings towards Shepard, she'd always wondered if that were wrong somehow; that harbouring such desires made her a deviant. To calm her anxieties, she did an extranet search on human/quarian relationships, and to her disappointment there was almost no data available. Most quarians only left the flotilla for Pilgrimages or on missions, which left precious little time to form relationships with outsiders. The only quarians who would have any significant relationships with aliens were exiles or those who had willingly left the fleet, and naturally there was very little information available about those individuals.

Finding little on interspecies relationships, Tali began researching human courtship and mating, and there was much informative (if horribly clinical) available on that subject. It confirmed her worst fear – that humans and quarians approached sexuality in more or less the same way. _And here I am, thinking it would be easy,_ she thought. _Or would have been._ Shepard was gone and looking this sort thing up was nothing more than self-indulgence.

"Tali'Zorah?"

Broken from her reverie, she turned around to see the familiar figure of Shala'Raan. She had been a friend of Tali's father for many years and was now the closest thing she had to any sort of parental figure. She was a member of the admiralty board and was generally known as a moderate, going along with whatever the other members of the board decided.

"I heard about your meeting with Koris and Gerrel," she said, stepping into the confined space of Tali's living quarters. "I hope they were not too harsh with you. It looks to me as if they were setting you up for failure, giving you the crew they did."

"Thank you, Shala," she said quietly. "But I wonder if it's not my fault as well. I could not gain their loyalty and respect, and how can I expect to perform well when they think nothing of my leadership?"

"Would having Prazza's respect make him any less of a fool? Would having Skaal's respect make him any less melancholy, or Juodaan any less of a drunkard? A ship is only as good as its crew, and the rest of the board has seen to it that you are given the very worst. Possibly it is Koris' doing; he and your father have never seen eye and perhaps this is his way of getting back at him. Whatever you choose to do with your life, Tali, I do hope you never aspire to the admiralty board. I'd hate to see you subject to all that infighting and politicking."

Hearing her words was like being on island of tranquillity and sanity amidst a raging sea of madness. "At least it was not...boring," said Tali, trying to find something positive to say about her experiences.

Shala stepped outside for a second and returned with a large, unmarked box. "I brought you something that should help you on your next assignment, whenever it is. A merchant ship visited the fleet while you were away, and when I saw these for sale I knew you would want them."

"You...you shouldn't have," she said, taking the box from Shala.

Tali eagerly opened the box, and what she saw inside left her in a stunned silence. "Is...is that..." she stammered. "Is that...the _Eviscerator?"_

The M-22 Eviscerator was a weapon Tali had long desired, yet had never been able to acquire due to its rarity. Among quarians the shotgun was the preferred weapon, as it was very effective in the cramped confines of a ship, and its lack of penetrating power meant it was less likely to put a hole in the hull. And among shotguns, few were prized more than the Eviscerator. It was more accurate and more powerful than any of its competitors, being able to take down pretty much anything within one or two shots. On the aesthetic side, the gun had clearly been designed to be as intimidating as possible, with a huge, chrome-plated barrel that had been "pre-scuffed" at the factory. The idea was that anyone on the wrong end of the Eviscerator would quickly get the idea that _very bad things_ were about to happen.

That was not the only weapon in the box. Beneath the Eviscerator was the M-6 Carnifex heavy pistol, another rare and expensive weapon, and one that was even more powerful than the Disemboweler she had lost. It was said that the Carnifex could blow a man's head clean off with a single shot or drop a charging krogan with only two rounds.

"Thank you," said Tali, holding up the Eviscerator. It simply felt so right in her hands.

"As I said, I don't know where you will be sent next, Tali, but I hope this helps. You can rely on these weapons, even if you cannot rely on your crew."

She looked down. "I keep telling myself they can't be as bad as they seem; that if I could just lead them properly, they would do better..."

"I know the sort of people they are forcing you to deal with, Tali. I knew Prazza's family, once."

"Really?"

"Yes, or at least I did before he was disowned. His family made me swear never to reveal the reason for it, and I will not dishonour that request. But I know that he and the rest of your crew were those whom their captains wanted to be rid of."

That made sense. If someone in the Alliance, for example, were found incompetent, then they would be demoted or dismissed. But the Migrant Fleet could not afford such measures, as each non-productive crewman was little more than a burden.

"I wish I were still with the _Normandy_ crew," she said softly. "I could trust them; that they would always do the right thing. With the crew I have new I don't trust them not to murder me in my sleep!"

"Do you know what happened to your old crew, after their ship was lost?"

Tali sighed. "They were broken up; reassigned. I...I don't know what became of even half of them. Shepard was our centre; without him there was nothing holding us together. But the work he started isn't over, and no one else seems to care..." She stopped herself, not wanting to burden Shala with her troubles. Few quarians cared about anything that happened outside of the fleet, and it was quite possible that most of them regarded the Reaper menace with the same amount of credulity as the Citadel Council.

"I know it is hard to lose your ship and captain. For most of us it is unthinkable. Your captain sounds like a...unique...individual."

"He was," she said, fighting the temptation to start gushing over Shepard. "When I first joined his crew, I thought he would look down upon me for being a quarian, but he never treated me any differently from anyone else on the _Normandy. _He...he was actually _interested_ in learning about us and life on the flotilla...I've never met anyone like that before."

Shala did not answer for a few seconds. "He must have been very important to you." Her tone made it clear that she knew Tali's feelings ran deeper than she was letting on.

"Yes, but...that...that doesn't matter. Shepard's gone and nothing will change that. The best way to honour him would be to continue what he was doing, but I can't do that. Not when I have obligations here." Even if she could, one single quarian wasn't going to do much against the Reapers, even with all the chaos and mayhem that usually followed her. Tali did not know, nor could she possibly know, that the machine gods had taken a particular interest in her, and were already plotting against her.

* * *

The next few months passed without incident. Tali continued watching the news, which only got worse and worse as time passed. There were reports of entire human colonies vanishing with no obvious indicators that they were attacked, and she was certain that the Reapers were behind it somehow. Official investigations had turned up nothing (as they always seemed to do) and it frustrated Tali to no end that no one was doing anything about the obvious threat, dismissing the disappearances as the work of slavers. Even more frustrating was how powerless she was to do anything about it.

Then, she got her next assignment.

"I had to pull a lot of strings to get you on this mission," Han'Gerrel had explained to her. "Koris was dead set against it, but he'll be down with an infection for the next few weeks, and that's definitely _not_ because of someone messing with his suit, not at all!"

Several days ago, they told her, a distress call was received from a quarian vessel somewhere in the Omega Nebula. What made of it particular interest to Tali was the message addressed Tali specifically. It was badly garbled, but whoever had sent it claimed to have important knowledge of the Reapers, and implored that Tali receive the transmission. The one sending the message was identified as a young quarian on Pilgrimage, though whatever had befallen him was as of yet unknown.

She did not like the sound of this, but if this person really did have information on the Reapers then it was vital that she find him. To that end they were giving her a new ship – a quarian-built one named the _Hvaala._ It wasn't really "new;" in fact it was nearly a hundred years old, but that only meant it had "character." The _Hvaala_ was slightly larger than the _Maldon_ had been, being originally designed to transport troops into battle. She was greatly curious to see what it was like inside, thinking of all the things that might have happened on board that ship and all the places it had been during its many years of service. New ships like the _Normandy_ were a sight to behold, but older vessels were definitely not without their charms.

As she walked down to the docking cradle, Tali felt more optimistic than she had in recent memory. She was on the trail of some vital info about the Reapers, which was just the thing needed to kick her out of her lethargy. The last few months had passed in a blur, and while Tali would not say she had been depressed and miserable during that time, neither would she say that she had been happy. Instead there had been only a latent frustration; a feeling that her day-to-day duties on the _Neema_ were trivial compared to what she _ought _to be doing. If the Reapers attacked then it wouldn't matter if the engines were operating at peak efficiency or that the starboard power couplings were a few microns out of alignment.

Unfortunately, her optimism came to a swift and brutal end when she met Vrael in front of the airlock, who was obviously not pleased at the prospect of having another mission with her.

"I understand why the board is sending us on this mission," he said, a sour, bitter tone in his voice, "but with all due respect, Tali'Zorah, I despise you and regard your presence as a personal affront."

Things did not get any better once she was aboard the _Hvaala._

Inside it was mostly indistinguishable from any other quarian ship, being well-worn and having supplies crammed into every possible space. It was also rather dim, as quarian vessels ran with only the bare minimum of lighting in order to save power. As spacefaring vehicles there was nothing wrong with it; nothing, that is, except its crew. Prazza hadn't changed any – not that Tali was expecting him to, only now he had a new girlfriend, this one named Hrana. Juodaan was still drinking himself stupid (in fact, he was presently slumped over one of the engine control consoles, having passed out), and Skaal was still miserably depressed (or perhaps depressingly miserable).

By the time they were actually underway, the situation had deteriorated.

Being in command, Tali had little direct responsibilities in operating the ship. Vrael was in the pilot's chair, and Skaal and Juodaan were in the engine room (she could tell from the sound of the engines that they were far from being fully optimised), and Prazza and Hrana were standing in the crew quarters, which were right next to the captain's quarters. The door to that room had long since broken off, so Tali could hear every word of their conversation.

"Oh Prazza!" Hrana gushed. "Is it true you destroyed wave after wave of geth on Eden Prime, and then took down a Colossus with just a pistol and a hand grenade?"

He laughed. "Of course I did! You think I'd make something like that up? I'm sure that's what Tali would say, but she's just jealous. I mean, what did she ever do that was so great? Oh, she helped kill a Reaper! Big deal! I'm sure Reapers are easy to kill as long as you attack their weak spot, or you debuff them first. But if Tali were in charge, you'd probably end up with a total party kill."

"_Oh Prazza..._you're _so_ brave..."

"I know! When I stare down death, I make death _blink._ Did I ever tell you I once fought and defeated an asari justicar?"

"Really?" Hrana exclaimed, easily falling for his blatant lies.

"Yes! See, there was this one time when I pirated a game, so this justicar came after me. She must have chased me across a dozen systems until she finally cornered me on some planet in the Styx Theta cluster. Well we must have fought for at least five or six days, and by the time were finished, the entire planet was destroyed, and I was victorious. That's why justicars don't operate outside asari space – they're too terrified of me."

"Wow! I can't believe my boyfriend is a man who iced a justicar! Everyone on the flotilla is going to be so jealous!"

"Of course they will be! Now, did I ever tell you about that time I fought and killed six thresher maws at once...?"

Their destination was several days away and involved numerous mass relay jumps, which would only prolong the agony. Every night Prazza would spend hours recounting his "exploits" to his girlfriend, which grew ever more absurd with each new tale, until he was bragging about punching out Reapers and destroying entire fleets just by glaring at them.

Juodaan, during his fleeting moments of sobriety, would periodically run screaming into the cockpit, declaring that "The end time are upon us! We are all doomed! Doomed, I say!", and he would continue his insane ranting until Vrael smacked on the top of his helmet, at which point he would quietly apologise and return to his station. Skaal mostly kept to himself, as it was later revealed that he was writing a novel.

"Let me guess," Vrael said upon learning of Skaal's endeavour, "everyone dies at the end."

"What? No, of course not! Death has the particular quality of putting an end to suffering. I want my characters to live forever, and suffer the greatest torments imaginable for every second of their pathetic lives."

"You're the one who's pathetic, Skaal. Who's going want to read something like that?"

"It's a children's book," he explained. "Parents will buy it to teach their sons and daughters the true futility of life."

"Right. Forget I asked."

* * *

The planet where the distress call had originated was a barren, blasted rock with an unbreathable atmosphere consisting mainly of carbon dioxide. A small amount of sulphur dioxide gave a sickly yellow colour to it, as if this planet needed anything to make it more unappealing. A scan of the planet's surface revealed no life signs and nothing of interest except the repeating distress call. There were no distinguishing features and every part of the planet's surface was the same as any other. In short, this world was the complete objectification of "meh."

"Why can't we ever go some place nice?" said Prazza, staring out the cockpit at the unbelievably uninteresting planet before them. "Though I'm sure Tali will make it interesting by blowing it up or something."

Vrael looked over the scanner readout. "Distress call's coming from somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Taking us in..."

His piloting skills were, as Tali had come to expect, quite substandard, as he flew the _Hvaala _at far too steep an angle of descent. The ship rocked as it suddenly hit the upper atmosphere, nearly throwing anyone standing to the floor. Vrael tried to compensate, but all he ended up doing was skipping the ship off the atmosphere and sending them back out into space.

"Splendid piloting skills you have, Vrael," said Skaal. "You tried to hit a planet and missed."

"Shut up."

Tali had to admit that she got a small thrill from seeing Vrael's ego deflated. He corrected his mistake, however, and soon they were flying through a yellowish haze, which was the predominant colour on this barren world. Still, she was beginning to feel a bit unnerved by it all. Why would anyone on Pilgrimage come to this place? There were certainly nothing of interest here, nor on any planets in this cluster. And just what was this information on the Reapers? Her anxiety grew as their ship closed in on the distress beacon. At the same time she felt proud that she was continuing Shepard's work in her own way, doing something about the _real_ threat.

Vrael brought the ship down – much more roughly than necessary – and Tali went to get her shotgun and pistol, ordering her crew to retrieve their weapons as well. Something was beginning to feel _very_ wrong about this, and she wanted to be prepared.

"Expecting a shootout, Tali?" Vrael sneered. "With you, I suppose it's always a possibility."

In the aft of the _Hvaala_ there was a large set of doors and unfolding ramp for offloading troops. There was enough space to store an exploration rover or infantry fighting vehicle like M35 Mako, but the fleet wasn't going to strain its already-tight budget to give her something like that. Instead they were to go on foot, which would be made more difficult by the rough, rocky terrain of this planet. When the doors finally opened Tali felt a wave of heat, even inside her suit. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere created a rampant greenhouse effect, raising temperatures to levels that would lethal to everything except perhaps a krogan or vorcha.

With her omni-tool set to track the distress signal, the six of them set out, and already Skaal was complaining about the dreariness of the place.

"This planet is like life itself," he moaned. "An endless sea of dullness and misery, where the only escape is death, but that is an escape to a place that far, far worse..."

"What's wrong with _him?"_ Hrana asked.

"Nothing's 'wrong' with him," said Prazza. "He's just sad because he's in my presence, the presence of a god, and who wouldn't feel a bit inadequate in that situation?"

Skaal sighed. "That, sir, is a terrible, pernicious lie. I am sad partly because this abomination we call 'life' has not seen fit to cause your head to explode."

"See? He's jealous."

"Of course he is, sweetie! I bet none of the ladies on the fleet would ever want _him!_"

"No, they wouldn't. They all come for _The Praz', _and as much as the spirit is willing, sometimes the flesh is weak. I must have bedded at least a thousand women over the years, but I only got eyes for you, Hrana."

"D'awww, that's so sweet!"

Tali felt the urge to retch.

Her omni-tool was now showing that the origin of the distress call was now less than fifty metres away, but there was no sign of any ship. It could be that the distress beacon had been launched in orbit and fallen the planet's surface, but why had they not detected any sign of the ship that it belonged to? Something was clearly not adding up, and Tali instinctively drew her shotgun, secretly hoping that she would get a chance to test it out.

When they finally reached the distress beacon, it was sitting upright, obviously having been planted there. There was no sign of whoever had put it there, and the pieces suddenly fell into place. The geth had tried this exact same thing during her time with Shepard – luring them away with a false distress signal and then attacking.

"It's a trap!" she cried, looking around the barren, blasted landscape for any sign of their attackers.

"Oh please!" said Prazza, waving his hand. "Who would be stupid enough to-"

Vrael interrupted him. "Say, do you hear something? Some sort of buzzing?"

Tali heard it too, coming from somewhere in the distance. Then, she caught her first glimpse of _them, _flying about on wings.

They did not look like any race she had ever seen before, appearing as insect-like bipeds with a chitinous exoskeleton. Their heads were long and tapered, mostly featureless save for a row of four yellow eyes, and it did not bear mentioning that they were absolutely hideous. There little time for an up-close examination, as they immediately opened fire on the quarians, who took cover behind a large outcropping of rock.

"What the hell are those things?" Prazza screamed, clearly terrified out of his mind.

Skaal, as always remained calm in his consummate melancholy. "Another sorry lot who hate us and want us dead, I see. How _delightful._"

Seeing that they were beyond the range of her shotgun, Tali switched to her Carnifex pistol and took a brief glance at their attackers. One of them was closing quickly, making a horrid noise as it did, so Tali drew a bead on it and fired two shots in quick succession. The Carnifex was incredibly loud and had monstrous kickback, but it was definitely effective, dropping the alien in a spray of yellow blood.

Prazza might have been a coward at heart, but as Tali was gaining glory by fighting and he wasn't, his ego proved the stronger force. He burst out of cover and, with pistols in _both_ hands, opened fire on the bizarre aliens, screaming all the while.

"_I...am...PRAZZA!"_ he bellowed. _"WAAAGH!"_

None of his shots came anywhere close to hitting their targets, but his absurd display of bravado must have given their attackers pause, because they momentarily halted their advance. This gave Tali the opportunity to pop out of cover again and lay down a stream of bullets on the nearest creature, killing it in a spectacularly messy fashion. Her victory was short lived, as their attackers were soon laying down a steady stream of fire, pining them down behind the outcropping. As if that were not bad enough, more the creatures were now flying in, and Tali quickly realised that she was the only one on her crew who was capable of fighting. The alcohol system in Juodaan's suit, programmed to dispense alcohol during times of stress, had already rendered him catatonic. Prazza was still gloriously incapable of hitting anything, and his girlfriend was doing nothing except cowering with her arms over head, screaming "Make it stop!" Vrael, for all his arrogance, was just as cowardly as Prazza, and Skaal was too busy lamenting his fate to fight.

Seeing that they were clearly outnumbered, their only hope of survival was to get back to their ship. "Skaal, Juodaan, Hrana, get back to the ship and prep it for take-off! The rest of us will hold them off."

"What? No, absolutely not!" Skaal protested. "That would involve moving out of cover, and they're shooting at us. With guns! I could get hurt!"

"_Just do it!"_

He gave a put-upon sigh. "Oh, very well, but let it be known that I intend to register a formal complaint with the admiralty board..."

As the three of them prepared to move out, Tali spotted another outcropping of rock a short distance away. In spite of the withering fire their attackers were spewing, their shields should hold long enough for them to get into cover. Unfortunately Prazza and Vrael were less enthusiastic about her plans.

"Are you mad?" said Vrael. "You'll get us all killed, just like I said you would!"

She was in no mood for his complaints. "We need to draw their fire so Skaal and the others can get back to the ship. Move out!"

Reluctantly they followed her out of cover as she sprinted for the outcropping, feeling a few jolts as rounds impacted her shields. Still, they lasted long enough for her to get to cover, as well as providing the distraction needed for her three crewmates to flee the area return to the ship. The enemies were now close enough for her shotgun, so she grabbed her Eviscerator and swiftly leaned out of cover and fired at the nearest alien.

The result was not pretty, as the Evisercator took out a chunk of the alien's head. Prazza and Vrael returned fire as well, even managing to take down a few of their attackers. Tali continued to unload on them with her Eviscerator, ignoring the few hits her shields were taking, as her weapon was terrifyingly efficient in dispatching her foes in the most hilariously gruesome (or gruesomely hilarious) manner imaginable. For a moment it seemed as if they were getting the upper hand – there were no more of these creatures flying in and their dead were quickly piling up – but then something caught Tali's eye.

One of the aliens was suddenly lifted off his feet and began writhing about as its body erupted in light. A resounding voice, coming from seemingly everywhere at once, called out.

"_ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL."_

The creature was wreathed in a crackling field of energy, a fearsome sight to behold. Tali hadn't the faintest idea of what was happening, only that something very bad was about to go down. She ejected the spent thermal clip from her Eviscerator and prepared to fire, when another voice rang out, similar to the first but different.

_"I ALREADY HAVE CONTROL."_

The creature, along with all the rest, froze where they stood, looking confused as the first voice spoke.

_"YOU SAID YOU WOULD LET ME-"_

_ "I SAID NOTHING OF THE SORT, CRETINOUS EXCUSE FOR A HYPER-ADVANCED MACHINE."_

Tali still had no idea what was going on, but seeing that these creatures had ceased their attack she and her remaining crew immediately bolted for their ship. The aliens remained oblivious as the two voices continued to argue.

"_WE AGREED THAT I WOULD BE IN CONTROL THIS TIME."_

_ "YOU FAILED TO OBTAIN SHEPARD'S BODY, JUST AS YOU FAILED TO OBTAIN TALI'ZORAH'S."_

_ "WHAT?"_

At this point, Harbinger finally noticed that Tali and the rest of her crew had already fled the battlefield and were back on their ship. He was understandably quite upset.

"_QUARIAN YOU'VE CHANGED NOTHING-"_

_ "FORGET IT, SHE IS ALREADY GONE. WE HAVE FAILED. ALLOWING YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS ENDEAVOUR WAS A MISTAKE. WE WILL FIND-"_

It didn't finish, as the Reaper known as Shug'nargoth'shemfhnargataghn was instantly annihilated by multiple magnetohydrodynamic cannon shots, courtesy of Harbinger.

"_NOW I HAVE CONTROL."_

* * *

The _Hvaala_ was accelerating upwards into space, all the while Tali's heart was still pounding. She still had no idea what had happened, but she and her crew were still alive and that was all that mattered for now. When she had calmed down she tried to piece together what she knew. Someone had lured them, her specifically, to this planet and tried to kill her. There was only explanation – that the Reapers were behind it, which meant she must have been a greater threat to them than she realised. It made sense; they had killed Shepard and now they were coming after his former teammates. It was a terrifying thought, and her first instinct was to warn her old friends that they were in grave danger.

"I've got something on scanners," said Vrael. "It's a ship, and a big one at that. It's on an intercept trajectory."

Tali froze. "Why didn't we pick it up before?"

"It must have been hiding behind one of the other planets in the system. Whatever it is, it's moving fast!"

When she saw the silhouette of the ship on the scanners, her blood ran cold. It was the same ship that had destroyed the _Normandy,_ and now it was after them.

"Get us out here, Vrael!"

He complied, but a vessel of this age didn't exactly have the latest in propulsion technology, and the FTL drive required a half-minute or so of warming up before it could be activated. In that time the alien ship was near enough that they could look out the window and see it approaching. A few moments later it began powering up its primary weapon – an devastatingly powerful particle beam that had ripped through the _Normandy_ like it was paper. For an instant she was back on board that ship, watching in horror as it disintegrated around her, scrambling into the escape pod, wondering all the while where Shepard was and if he had made off the ship in time...

The _Hvaala _rocked to the side as Vrael frantically tried to evade the enemy's particle beam. This ship wouldn't be able to take so much as single hit from that weapon, although Tali did find a measure of comfort in the fact that death, when it came, would probably be swift and painless. At this point in her life she was long since accustomed to feelings of impending doom, so the possibility of dying did not frighten her nearly as much as it once did.

Today was not her day to die, as the FTL drive kicked in and sped them away from their attackers. Unbeknownst to the crew, the enemy's particle beam grazed the _Hvaala_ as it went to FTL, causing a surge of antiprotons in the engine core. This, combined with optimisations Tali had made to the FTL drive, caused the_ Hvaala_ to accelerate to infinite velocity (an impossibility) in exactly zero seconds. Because velocity is defined as distance over time, and since their distance was infinity and their time zero, this caused the ship's navigational computer to successfully divide by zero when it came time to calculate their speed (the second impossibility). When this happened, the _Hvaala_ was accelerated to a speed _beyond_ infinity (the third impossibility), which caused their velocity to roll over from "slightly more than infinity" to "negative infinity." For one brief moment their ship experienced both positive and negative velocity, essentially going forwards and backwards at the same time (the fourth impossibility), mere nanoseconds before their two velocities cancelled each other out. No one aboard the _Hvaala_ had any idea what had happened, although thirteen parallel universes were utterly devastated by the sheer impossibility of the things Tali'Zorah had wrought.


	8. Infinite Space, Infinite Stupidity

Chapter 8 – Infinite Space, Infinite Stupidity

* * *

The following morning Tali was awoken by the violent shuddering of their ship. As she sat up in her bed she realised that she had suddenly grown in size the point where her feet were now lightyears away from the rest of her body. A second later she had shrunk down the point where she was in danger of being crushed by protons and electrons, and when she attempted to stand up she found that she could reach her hand all the way around to the far side of the observable universe.

"What's going on here?" she said hazily, wondering if some glitch in her suit might have filled her bloodstream with some sort of psychotropic drug.

It was no acid trip. When everything returned to her normal, she brought up the _Hvaala's_ sensor logs on her omni-tool, which revealed that they had just passed through a region of space that had been folded into more dimensions than a Calabi-Yau manifold. She made her way to the cockpit, which was empty at this hour as the rest of the crew were asleep. A quick read-through of the sensor logs confirmed that their ship had suddenly experienced movement in far more than three dimensions. Tali was no astrophysicist, but something told that these circumstances were far from normal.

This dimensional buffoonery had kicked them out of FTL and, surprisingly, within visual distance of planet. The scanners were picking up an immense energy signature coming from the planet, which, like the last one they had been on, was a barren world with a thin, unbreathable atmosphere. As curious as she was about what had caused the sudden wrinkling and distortion of spacetime, she was not about to indulge that curiosity, especially after they had nearly been killed by some aliens' scheme. The admiralty needed to hear what had happened, and she needed to warn her former shipmates that the Reapers might be after them.

There was a beeping noise from one of the consoles, indicating that someone was attempting to contact them. She opened a channel.

"I don't know who you are, but thank God you've come! My name is Einar Sigurðsson, head researcher here at the Gimli Research Facility. We've experienced a catastrophic teleportation accident, with-"

The transmission ended abruptly, followed by another burst of energy that caused such a warp in spacetime that, for about half a second, caused the front of the _Hvaala_ to be rubbing against the rearmost part of the ship. The rest of the crew, sensing that something out of the ordinary had happened, came storming into the cockpit, demanding to know what was happening. Instead of explaining, Tali simply replayed the transmission.

"Teleportation?" said Vrael. "That's impossible, at least outside of mass relays."

That wasn't true; the Protheans had managed to duplicate one of the mass relays, but she was not eager to get into an argument with Vrael.

"They must have created one," she said flatly. "But it looks like something went wrong. I'm getting all sorts of strange readings from research facility. There are numerous individual lifesigns, but there is one lifesign that appears to be emanating from the entire structure."

Vrael crossed his arms. "You're not actually suggesting that we go down there and investigate?"

"Someone down there needs our help, we can't just ignore them!"

He said nothing, instead bringing up his omni-tool. "I'm running a tally of every time your screw us over, Tali'Zorah. So far you're doing it at an average of 2.94 times a day."

"My decision stands," she said, refusing to back down.

"There better be some sort of monetary reward for this," grumbled Vrael, seating himself in the pilot's chair. "If there isn't, you owe me, big time."

The planet they were now headed towards was only somewhat less indistinguishable from the last one they had visited. It did possess mildly interesting geological features, if anyone on board the _Hvaala_ were a geologist, but no one paid any attention to such things as their ship descended to the research facility's landing pad. From the air the facility appeared to be quite large, spanning three separate installations all connected by tramways. As the _Hvaala_ touched down, none of them could see any Cerberus markings on the outside of the base, which was an encouraging sign, for it meant that the scale of the disaster would probably be less than it might have been.

The six of them filed out of the _Hvaala_, everyone but Tali grumbling about how they were once again chafing under her oppressive leadership. As they approached the entrance, Einar Sigurðsson's voiced crackled over Tali's suit radio.

"-you receiving this? This entire facility is in lockdown – I can hack the security system to open some doors for you, but only for a short period of time before the station VI realises what I've done and auto-corrects."

"Just what is going on here, anyway?"

"The short of it is that we were researching teleportation as a prelude to creating our own mass relays. Everything was going well at first, but then...people started changing. They became violent; paranoid. I don't know why, but I guess when you're working with untested technology you have to expect things to go awry. Reminds me of the old Icelandic proverb, '_Kakan er lygi'."_ Unfortunately Tali's suit was unable to translate, lacking that particular language database. That was a rather surprising deficiency, given that her suit was programmed with a wide variety of languages, even the obscure, extinct quarian dialect of Vaalish, which was so obscure that only one word was known, and it was obscene.

Einar opened the facility entrance for them, which led into a narrow, dark corridor. At first Tali thought that there had been some sort of power loss that had knocked out the lights, but as she walked down the hall she noticed that the low level of lighting was intentional. There were a few lights on the ceiling, all of which were far too dim to provide anything more than feeble illumination. The result of all this was that Tali could barely see more than ten paces down the hall, and the cold metal of the walls meant that the infra-red mode of her helmet did not do much to help. Making it all just a little worse was the strange, vaguely ominous rumbling noises coming from all around her, sounding like the throaty growl of some immense beast.

"Why is it so dark in here?" Vrael asked aloud.

Einar's voice came over the radio, making Tali jump. "Oh, that. We purposely limited the lighting to conserve power for the main teleporter. Well, that's what the _official_ purpose was. Really, we wanted everything to be as dark as possible to make the place seem scarier."

"What?" Tali exclaimed. "_Why would you do that?"_

"This is an isolated facility, which means we tend to get bored rather easily, and – wait, I hear something outside. I'll contact you later – you need go north and reach the main teleporter control and shut it down, destroy it; just do whatever you can to put it out of commission!"

His transmission ended abruptly. Tali began to feel a chill, and a creeping sensation that someone was watching them. She unholstered her shotgun, not willing to take any chances, and proceeded north, as Einar had instructed.

Past the nearest doorway, they reached what appeared to be a lobby of sorts, with a receptionist's desk at the far end, behind which was a large sign that read _Valh__ö__ll Research Facility - Óðinn Station._ A corpse was slumped over the desk with a large knife sticking out of its back, and that was one of several dead bodies strewn about the room, each killed in what had obviously been a rather brutal fashion. Some insane individual had apparently taken the time to write the words _Helvíti óbundið_ in blood along the floor. Like the rest of the place, it was abysmally dark, and there were many dark corners and crevices where Tali could imagine some soul-devouring horror lurking.

Einar's voice returned after a burst of static. "-facility sensors tell me you're in Óðinn Station, the main transport hub for the rest of the base. You need to take the monorail to Hermóðr Station, where the main teleporter chamber is. From there you should-" Once again the transmission was cut off abruptly.

Past the receptionist's desk was a large set of doors, with a sign above indicating that the main monorail station was just ahead. The door was sealed by the facility lockdown, but Tali found that hacking it to open was no great matter. In her experience hacking things was never very difficult – a rootkit here, a buffer overflow there, and any system was yours to do with as you pleased.

In the hallway ahead Tali could hear a loud scratching noise. Activating the flashlight mode of her omni-tool, she shone it in the direction of the sound and saw man crouching in the corner. As soon as he saw the light he stood up and faced him, revealing that his clothes were soaked with blood and, more importantly, he was holding an axe in his hands.

"What's this?" he growled, a murderous glint in his eyes. "This whole place has gone to hell, and they send a bunch of _space gypsies_ to fix it?"

"Who are you?" said Tali, unsure of what else to say to this obviously deranged individual.

"_Your death!"_ he howled, right before he began laughing maniacally and charging at the quarians with his axe.

Tali fired her shotgun without a moment's hesitation, dropping the insane man with a single shot. It was not a pretty sight.

"What is it about you, Tali," said Skaal, sounding utterly untroubled by what had just happened, "that makes you so innately hateable?"

She ignored him and pressed onward into the main monorail station. It too, was unbearably dark, with the monorail car barely visible in the gloom. Whatever illumination they had installed was pitifully inadequate against the suffocating darkness, with the light from the lamps seemingly unable to go more than a few feet before giving up the ghost. Compared to where she had just been, this part of the building looked more like the streets of Omega than a high-tech research centre, being gritty and grimy everywhere she looked. Tali guessed, correctly, that this too was all intentional design decision on the part of the researchers here, who preferred to be confronted with a dark and gritty atmosphere whenever they stepped off the monorail car.

A glowing PDA on one of the benches caught Tali's eye. She picked it up and quickly ascertained that it contained audio logs from one Dr. Martin Geislein, one of the head researchers at this facility. The body of the poor doctor was a few feet away, having had a shovel driven through his entire body. How that had happened, exactly, was not something Tali wanted to speculate on.

She played the oldest audio log first: _"Dr. Geislein's personal log, October 23, 2183. The power requirements of this project are astronomical. The matter/antimatter reactor is the most efficient means of producing energy in the universe, and even with the extra 500 tonnes of antimatter fuel we still won't have enough to sustain our experiment for the year. I don't know how the mass relays are able to keep functioning after so many years; likely their power source is something far beyond our comprehension."_

500 tonnes of antimatter? That was a mind-boggling amount, and she could only guess at how they had ever managed to procure that much. She brought up the second-oldest log:

_"Dr. Geislein's personal log, October 28, 2183. Thirteen researchers have been confined to the medical bay, and although the exact reason is being kept from us, rumour has it that all of them are suffering from sudden outbreaks of dementia and schizophrenia. Even among my colleagues I've noticed that they have become irritable and irrational, often violent. They tell me it is just a consequence of working in an isolated environment, but I'm sure that our teleportation experiments must be related."_

She then brought up the third and final log entry, dated three days ago:

_"Doctor Geislein's personal log, November 4, 2183. This entire facility is in chaos, and...I doubt that I will make it out alive. If you're reading this, I might ask you to tell my wife I love her, but there's not a snowball's chance in hell of that happening ever since that scraggy bitch served me those divorce papers two months ago...that dirty, back-stabbing whore...err...what was I talking about again? Oh, right, the chaos in the base. Everyone's gone insane and they're tearing each other to pieces; Einar and I are the only ones not affected, though I have no explanation why. To whomever reads this, you must destroy the main teleporter! It's the source of all this death, I'm sure of it, and – oh god, they've found me!"_ There was the sound of something breaking, followed by a frenzied scream. _"No, not the spleen! Aaaaaaaggghh!"_

She put down the log, just as Juodaan suddenly began screaming and flailing about. "_Agh!_ Pyjaks! Get them off me! Get them off!"

Vrael grabbed his arm. "Get a hold of yourself, man!"

This did nothing to calm Juodaan, who continued screaming and thrashing, trying to get the invisible pyjaks off his body. It quickly came to an end, however, as his alcohol system immediately compensated for his high level of stress, rendering him unconscious.

"What's wrong with him?" said Vrael as he dragged Juodaan's body into the monorail car. "I know he's a drunk, but I never thought he was actually _crazy, _just a bit-"

Vrael froze, staring at something behind Tali, but when she turned around there was nothing. Whatever he had seen must have spooked him, because his eyes were as wide a saucers.

"No, this...she can't be here..."

"Who can't?" said Tali. "What did you see?" She felt a sense of dread creeping into the corners of her mind, thinking of how the people in this place were driven insane.

Vrael quickly collected himself. "When I was on my Pilgrimage, I met an asari on the Citadel...I don't even remember her name, but we were...um..._friends._ We parted ways after my Pilgrimage was over, and the last I heard of her was that she had been killed in the geth attack. But just a moment ago I saw her standing there, in the monorail car, even though that's impossible!"

Skaal grunted. "You see, Tali'Zorah, your presence is such an affront to the universe that it warps reality and brings people back from the dead."

"But seeing her there wasn't what was so terrible," continued Vrael, "it was that she...she had a tuba..."

Tali frowned. "A tuba? That's a little strange, but-"

"No!" he cried. "I mean, she had...had a tuba..._through her whole head!"_

Everything fell quiet for a moment. "Well, I guess she had a real head for music!" Prazza said after several seconds of silence.

"This place...it's doing something to our heads...damn you, Tali! Why do you always bring us to the worst places in the galaxy?"

She ignored his insult and walked to the cab of the monorail. Getting it moving was simple enough after a few hacks with her omni-tool, and soon they were on their way to Hermóðr Station. Maybe it was just her anxiety, but something about this whole research base felt _wrong._ It was not a feeling she could describe, only a sensation that she was in the presence of something that just shouldn't _be._

Turning back to speak with her crew, she saw that they were now all lying on the floor of the monorail car in a bloody heap, apparently dead. Prazza lifted his head up and spoke in a voice that was both terrifying and pitiful at the same time.

"You got us all killed, Tali'Zorah, just like we always knew you would!"

An instant later it all vanished. It was all just a horrifying vision, one that had mercifully been brief. She returned to the front of the carriage, waiting for her heart to stop pounding and telling herself that what wasn't real couldn't hurt her.

A few minutes later the monorail car came to a stop and the doors opened with a loud _whoosh._ Tali headed out with her team following close behind, with Juodaan having been woken from his stupor by the application of several electric shocks, a method which Vrael had discovered was quite useful in rousing him.

A large metal doorway stood before them, with with the words _Hermóðr Station_ above, followed by a warning that "Delta-level Clearance Requred Beyond This Point."

"I should be able to get that door open for you," radioed Einar. "Amazing how easy this security system is to hack, really. To be honest, it was really just put in place to placate the higher-ups. We never seriously imagined that anyone would actually come here and steal our research."

The door opened with a loud groan, revealing the main security checkpoint for Hermóðr Station. The six of them walked inside, only to be confronted with a loud, automated voice declaring, "_Warning! Security breach at checkpoint! Automated turrets online!" _Two large Gatling guns dropped from the ceiling and roared to life, sending the quarians scattering about in search of cover. Tali ducked into a nearby office room, while Prazza and the others took shelter outside the Hermóðr Station doors. The only one who did not take cover was Hrana, who was befuddled by all the loud noises. She had scant time to be confused, however, as the two Gatling guns immediately trained themselves on her.

Tali could do nothing except watch in horror as the guns instantly reduced Hrana to red mist. "Oh, sorry about the auto-turrets!" came Einar's voice over the radio. "Forgot about them; I'll shut them down for you. One of our researchers; he's a bit of a joker see, and he thought it'd be a real laugh if he'd give everyone coming into Hermóðr Station a real fright when those things popped out of the ceiling." But this came far too late to help poor Hrana, who had been filled with so many bullets that they would have exceeded her weight by half.

In shock, Tali walked over to where Hrana had stood just moments before. Whatever was left of her wouldn't even fit into a coffee tin.

"Oh dear," said Prazza, stepping out of cover and examining Hrana's mortal remains. "It would seem that my girlfriend is dead." His tone of voice was totally unconcerned, sounding about as broken-up as someone whose pet fish had just died.

Skaal shrugged. "It would seem you might have chosen better."

"I guess so."

This was so completely at odds with how she expected people to react that she very nearly lost at that moment. "She...she's dead!" Tali cried, getting in Prazza's face. "How you can say something like that?"

"No matter," he replied, waving his hand. "I can always get another girlfriend."

Now she was utterly exasperated. "I...I can't believe this! One of the crew is dead and you...you're just...just acting like _nothing's_ happened?"

Vrael sighed. "I don't know why you're making such a big deal about this, Tali. We all knew Hrana was a stupid bint when she joined us. Shame she had to go this particular way, though. We were kinda hoping she would get devoured by a thresher maw; now _that _would have been entertaining."

As much as Tali wanted to continuing yelling and screaming at her crew for their outrageous callousness, she had seen enough of them to know that it would be futile. Whatever shred of a chance her team had of ever earning her respect was now gone, as far removed from possibility as escaping from beyond the event horizon of a black hole.

"You know, I'm rather surprised she lived as long as she did," said Prazza as they made their way through the security checkpoint. "I remember one time just after we met when she accidentally spaced herself. If it weren't for her suit she'd be dead."

Their conversation was interrupted by the loud sound of howling and screaming. A horde of the base's researchers, now clearly insane, were pouring through the security checkpoint door. Their clothes were tattered and bloody, and most of them were wielding weapons of some sort, mostly guns and knives, although a few individuals were brandishing chainsaws, making Tali wonder why a research facility stocked such a thing.

"Quarians!" one of them screamed. "Kill them all before they put their gypsy curses on us!"

Seeing that the five of them would be quickly overwhelmed by the horde of insane men before them, Tali radioed Einar. "Turn those auto-turrets back on, now!"

A few seconds later the two Gatling guns dropped down from the ceiling, and even though the insane men might have lost their minds, they had still had enough sense to realise just how thoroughly and utterly screwed they were. The guns opened fire, killing them all in less than three seconds, in a scene that was so mind-bogglingly gory and so ludicrously bloody that Tali simply blacked out for a few seconds rather than perceive the outrageously horrific scene before her.

"Oh,_ keelah,_" she whispered, looking over the bloody mess that had once been the security checkpoint.

"Are they all dead?" Einar asked. "That must have been the bulk of the research team. Hmm, I never thought they'd band together like that. They must _really_ have hated you."

"You...you owe us an explanation. What happened here?"

"Like I said, we were researching teleportation, first on a small-scale, with the goal of eventually building our own mass relays. I'll spare you the technical details on how the system works, but essentially it folds spacetime to create an artificial wormhole between two points. After a year we had a working system, but the power requirements were tremendous. Our station's reactor could only provide with enough power to keep the portal open for more than fifteen seconds or so. But we were confident that we would solve the problem with enough time."

"So what went wrong?"

"Every time we sent something through the teleporter, the transport should have been instantaneous, but it wasn't. Instead, there was a two second delay, as if whatever we were transporting was getting hung up mid-teleport. We tried sending a probe through the portal and setting it to record as much data as possible, but it found nothing. At first we thought it was just an unexplained side-effect of the teleportation process, at least until the people we sent through started...changing. All the extraplanar subjects started becoming listless and agitated, eventually culminating in insanity. We had them confined to their quarters, but then...the others started to change, the ones who had not been sent through the teleporter."

"Any idea why?" This seemed all-too familiar to Tali, who was beginning to wonder if anyone in the galaxy could do ground-breaking research without it all going horribly, horribly wrong.

"I can only guess that somehow, our teleporter opened up a gateway to some place...some place we shouldn't have. When people are sent through the teleporter, they are sent beyond the known universe...who knows where they were while they were being transported? I forgot to mention that, right before the rest of the researchers started going insane, the main teleporter, it...it activated on its own. I don't know how it happened, but it released a massive surge of energy that warped spacetime for tens of thousands of kilometres around this facility."

"We noticed that," said Tali. "That was what brought us here."

"Nothing came through that teleporter, or at least nothing we could detect. But now I believe that it must have been something in the higher dimensions, perhaps the fourth, fifth, or even sixth dimension. In that case, we would have nothing with which to detect it. They must be what drove the rest of the researchers insane, and that is why you must destroy the teleporter, so that more of these higher-dimensional aliens...beings...whatever they are, do not enter our universe!"

"Wait, how come you weren't affected?"

"I...I don't know."

Prazza chuckled. "Obviously his stats were high enough that he passed the mental resistance check for demonic possession."

"You're not far from the main teleporter," said Einar. "Once you're there, you must destroy the teleporter by whatever means you can. That should shut down the entire apparatus and close off any interdimensional gateways."

The quarians pushed on ahead through dark, grey corridors, all of which were pockmarked with bullet holes and smeared with blood. In a grisly display of artistry, someone had written words such as SUFFER and BURN all along the walls in blood. From somewhere off in the distance Tali could hear a sinister growling noise, though in all likelihood it was just some bit of machinery. The whole place was thrumming with sheer level of energy coursing through this section of the research facility, and the teleporter was not even active at that moment. According to her omni-tool's scans, the energy put out by the facility's main reactor was close to five petawatts; far more than the produced by the engines on even the larger vessels in the Migrant Fleet.

Just then, Tali heard someone whispering to her. It was not one of her crew, as the voice was coming from inside her helmet. _"You must kill them all,_" it said in a raspy, whispering tone. _"If you want to live, you must kill your team. It is the only way."_

Though the voice's advice might have sounded sensible at some point, Tali told herself that it was just something trying to mess with her head.

_"Prazza's going to get himself killed soon enough, why not just get it over with now?"_

She ignored the voice and pressed onwards, stopping only when Prazza began screaming and shooting his gun into the darkness.

"No! _No!_" he cried. "_You _are the demons! _You are! WAAAGH!"_

Vrael tried to calm Prazza by his usual method of smacking him in the back of the head. "Get it together!"

"I...I just saw all my ex-girlfriends, and they were trying to kill me!"

"Look, we're all on edge, but we're not going to make it through unless we all pull together. That, or Tali'Zorah dies horribly, and spares us all her onerous leadership."

The nearer they drew to the main teleporter, the stronger the spacetime distortions became, until it was folded into the fifth, sixth, and occasionally seventh dimensions. Ahead lay the hatchway to the teleporter chamber, which was completely covered in labels warning of things from high radiation to high voltage to more absurd phenomena such as "spacetime shenanigans" and "dimensional dickery."

The door opened, seemingly on its own, revealing the cavernous teleporter chamber. It was spherical in shape, lined with numerous spikes that served no apparent purpose except to look scary. In the middle was the teleporter itself, which was a large ring about four metres in diameter and covered in yet more spikes. Nearly the entire floor was covered in power cables running to the teleporter, with only a small walkway leading up the main gateway, and another walkway branching off that led to some sort of control panel. The whole room was humming loudly with the sheer volume of energy running through it, enough that, if suddenly released, would result in an enormous explosion. That thought troubled Tali more than any other.

The teleporter control panel was a maze of buttons, switches, and readout displays that were far beyond most peoples' comprehension. All, that was, save for a large, red button that was marked _Do not push this button under any circumstance._

She had no time to contemplate the reason behind having such a button on the controls, as the doorway to the chamber opened. Thinking it was another of the insane research team, everyone drew their weapons and trained them on the door. A single man stood before them, and he was a horrific sight, with both of his eyes missing and a twisted grin on his face.

"Congratulations, Tali," he said, his voice revealing that he was Einar. "You got through the lesser men that prowled these dark halls, as I knew you would."

From the tone of his voice it was clear that this man wasn't the helpfully ally they thought he was. "Stay back!" she snapped, gripping tightly to her shotgun.

"Or what? You'll shoot? Go ahead – this chamber has enough power flowing through it that a stray bullet will fill the room with enough energy to power a dreadnought!"

"_Keelah,_ what happened to your eyes?" said Vrael, noticeably trembling with fear.

Einar laughed. "In the higher dimensions, you don't need eyes to see! When this teleporter was first activated, it brought forth beings from the fifth, sixth, and seventh dimensions; beings who were utterly beyond our comprehension! They were curious about our limited three-dimensional perception of the universe, and so they wanted to use our bodies as vessels with which to experience it. But the weak-minded fools couldn't handle it, as you have seen. Only I possessed the mental fortitude necessary to become a proper host."

Prazza was distinctly unimpressed. "You said fifth, sixth, and seventh dimensions. But you forgot the fourth."

"The fourth dimension? They're naught but a bunch of moronic whelps and sheepworrying gits!"

"What do you want with us?" said Tali. "Why bring us here?"

"You have the attention of the beings of the fifth, sixth, and seventh dimensions, Tali'Zorah. Did you think they would not notice a traveller in both time and space such as yourself? They want you, Tali; they did not tell for me what purpose, but I will not deny them their prize."

She did not move. "I don't think so."

"Well I don't think your opinion really matters!" said Einar in a rather put-upon tone.

A loud klaxon sounded, and the room surged with energy as the teleporter came online. A glowing light appeared in the centre of the ring, growing steadily until it was blindingly bright. "What the Protheans have created, we have recreated," Einar continued. "This gateway can send anything to any point in the galaxy, but that is mere child's play compared to its _true_ capability – allowing us to traverse higher dimensions!"

"You're insane."

"Why do I get the feeling you say that a lot?"

"I am not going through your portal, and neither are any of my crew," she said flatly.

This only resulted in a howl of laughter from Einar. "Oh, things have gone far too well for me to let you walk away now. It was truly an amazing stroke of luck that you happened to come across this facility when you did. And now you're going to go through my teleporter, whether you like it or not."

"Or you'll what?"

That question appeared to puzzle him. "Oh bugger, I hadn't really thought about that..."

Prazza was having none of Einar's lecture, and seeing an opportunity he bolted for the teleporter control panel and mashed the big red button with his fist. Immediately another klaxon began wailing, and a computerised voice explained just how, exactly, Prazza had screwed everyone over:

_"Initiating shutdown of antimatter containment system. Time remaining to completion: one minute. Warning: failure of antimatter containment will result in matter/antimatter annihilation. Addendum: Failure of antimatter containment will result in the release of approximately 89,875,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy."_

"You...you fool!" Einar cried. "Do you have any idea what you've just done?"

Vrael tired of his lecturing, and seeing that Einar had no real means of coercing them into doing his will (thus making him a pre-eminent failure among supervillains), he simply shot him dead.

"Uh, I guess we should get out of here, then?" Prazza said meekly.

"There's no time!" said Tali, running over to the teleporter controls. We have less than a minute before this place goes up; we'll never make it to the ship in time!"

"Then we're all doomed," said Vrael. "We could of just kept going on our way, but no, you just _have_ to go around solving every single problem in the galaxy!"

"Quiet!" she snapped. "I might be able to retarget the teleporter to send us away from here."

"The teleporter? Are you mad?"

"Do you have any better ideas?"

That shut Vrael up, allowing Tali to concentrate on figuring out the controls. Quickly navigating the menu system, she located the "set destination" option, which was presently set to some bizarre coordinates that consisted entirely of imaginary numbers and Calabi-Yau manifolds.

"_Warning: thirty seconds to antimatter containment failure."_

Now the system was asking for a new set of coordinates, but Tali had no idea what the coordinates meant, as it did not use the galactic standard for locations. Letting out a few curses, she backtracked her way through the "set destination" menu until she located something called "presets." Most were locations she had never heard of, all except for one: "Citadel." Selecting that resulted in a warning message that read: _Destination beyond minimum allowable precision. Drift of 100 kilometres is likely._ That meant that while the teleporter might send them to the Citadel, it might very well teleport them into a wall or worse. That still offered a far greater chance of surviving than staying here, however.

"Let's go!" she shouted, leading the way to the teleporter ring.

"_Warning: ten seconds to antimatter containment failure."_

Her team followed her, although Juodaan had to be dragged along as he had, predictably, passed out from drunkenness. Normally Tali would have been aghast at the prospect of throwing herself into some portal like this, but staying here would mean being blasted into pieces smaller than the Planck length. The five of them leaped into the swirling orb of energy, disappearing mere seconds before the facility's antimatter containment system failed, causing the instantaneous conversions of 500 tonnes of antimatter into pure energy.

The explosion, for anyone alive to see it, would have been spectacular. Releasing 21,480 gigatons of energy, it created fireball 400 kilometres in diameter and destroyed everything within almost 2000 kilometres. For Tali'Zorah, this was just another average day.


	9. Heavy Risk, But The 'Praz

Chapter 9 – Heavy Risk, But The 'Praz...

* * *

Somewhere in the lands of Ferelden, a band of adventurers was making their way through a dense forest. They were led by Grey Warden and followed by another named Alistair, along with an irascible Witch of the Wilds named Morrigan. They had been travelling through the woods for several days now, as part of their quest to gather an army to defeat the Darkspawn horde, and so far they had encountered nothing out of ordinary.

Without warning, five strangely-clad individuals appeared in a flash of light, then disappeared as quickly as they had come.

"Did...did you see...that?" said Alistair, stopping in his tracks.

"See what?" asked Morrigan, who had been previous engaged in an escalating battle of insults with Alistair, a battle he was losing badly.

"This group of people just...appeared...for a second, and they wearing this really strange-looking armour..."

As Morrigan had been looking away when the strange interlopers appeared, she naturally assumed that this was just more evidence of Alistair being an addle-brained idiot. "So tell me, Alistair, if you will indulge me, do you often see things that do not exist?"

"They _were_ real, I tell you!_"_

She was clearly unconvinced. "Of course they were. And you are also a very intelligent man."

Thenceforth no one in the party spoke of it, and Alistair assumed that whatever he saw was simply the result of a bad batch of ale.

* * *

When Tali came to her wits she immediately had the sensation of falling. She then had the realisation, "I _am_ falling," which was quickly followed by the realisation, "This is going to hurt." Before she hit the ground, however, she distinctly heard someone speaking with a voice that was very familiar, but the name of the man to whom the voice belonged eluded her.

"-and I demand that the Council move to investigate the abduction of our-"

Tali landed on something soft enough to partially break her fall. The next thing she heard was a stream of turian profanity, which made her realise that she had not landed on _something_, but _someone_. A quick glance around revealed the rest of her crew had landed in the same place she had, which to her immense surprise was the Citadel Council Chambers. Worse, she had landed directly atop the turian councillor, who was now yelling at her to get off him.

When she got to her feet, she was confronted with the shocked stares of the Citadel Council, including its newest member, David Anderson.

"What is the meaning of this?" the salarian councillor exclaimed. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"

By now the turian councillor was already calling for C-Sec to come and arrest the interlopers. The rest of her crew had not landed far, although they had not had the benefit of landing atop any of the councillors to break their fall.

"I...I'm sorry," said Tali, completely clueless as to how she was going to talk herself out of this one. They had just literally dropped into a meeting of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy, who probably did not take too kindly to a bunch of quarians suddenly appearing in the hallowed Council Chambers. "It was a teleporter mishap."

"A teleporter mishap!" said the turian. "You expect me to believe that...wait...I remember you! You're that quarian that gave evidence proving Saren's guilt in the attack on Eden Prime."

"Tali'Zorah?" Anderson said.

"Yes," she answered, finding the presence of the human councillor comforting somehow. Anderson had been the _Normandy's_ captain before Shepard, who had named the captain as councillor after humanity had been granted a seat on the council.

"I suggest we take a brief hiatus, councillors," he said, "while we sort this matter out."

The turian just grumbled, limping away to talk in private with other councillors. The rest of Tali's crew milled about the Council Chambers while she talked with Anderson, all of them thinking that her rapport with the human councillor was yet another sign that she had sold out her own species.

"Well, this isn't how I imagined my meeting with the council would go," he said. "Five quarians suddenly appear in the Council Chambers, one of whom happens to be the one who helped stopped Saren. Tell me again how this happened."

That was no small order. "Uh...well...," she began, "we were investigating a research facility on some remote planet that was developing teleporter technology. But then it all went wrong and everything exploded." Tali did not know it then, but the phrase,_"Then it all went wrong and everything exploded"_ would soon become an insanely popular extranet meme.

Anderson merely raised an eyebrow upon hearing all of this. "Teleportation? As far as I know no one has developed anything close to a functioning teleporter; at least no one in Council Space."

"It wasn't worth it," said it. "Their teleporter drove the entire research staff insane and tore the spacetime continuum in ways it probably shouldn't be torn. We used it to escape just before the entire facility was destroyed."

"I see," he said flatly. "I'm just glad you're not Shepard and I don't have to explain to the council why you've gone and destroyed yet another research facility."

Hearing Anderson mention Shepard, along with being back on the Citadel, was unexpectedly painful for Tali. It was in these chambers that she had presented the crucial evidence against Saren, and where Shepard had been made the first human Spectre. It was on that day that her life changed completely, becoming much more dangerous, although much more interesting at the same time. Now it all seemed like so much ancient history.

"There's something else I need to tell you," she said. "We were attacked by the same aliens that destroyed the _Normandy._ I...I don't know what they are, but I fear they're going after the rest of Shepard's team! They're working for the Reapers; know it!"

This piqued the councillor's interest. "I guess that's hardly a surprise. We've been getting reports of entire human colonies disappearing without a trace; it's likely that whoever's responsible for the abductions was responsible for destroying the _Normandy _as well_._ That's what I've been trying to tell the council, but it feels like I'm just banging my head against a brick wall."

It was a disgrace, what the council was doing. Ignoring everything Shepard had said, and actively ignoring the looming threat. "They can't do this," Tali muttered. "If they don't take a stand against the Reapers then Shepard died for nothing! Isn't the Alliance going to do anything?"

"I don't like this any more than you do, Tali, but the council has done things they way it has for over a thousand years and they're not going to pay much heed to what the newcomers are saying. As for the Alliance, they tore apart everything Shepard said. The _Normandy _crew was broken up; reassigned. I get the feeling the Alliance brass didn't care for all the aliens he was recruiting."

"But how can they do that? How can they just ignore everything he said and did?"

"I take it you haven't had much involvement in politics, Tali. Go anywhere in the galaxy and its still the same."

Their conversation was interrupted by a commotion amongst her crew. Two C-Sec officers were dragging Prazza away, who was loudly protesting all the while.

"Unhand me, _bosh'tets!_ I'm the goddamn _'Praz! _You can't do this! I'll have your jobs!"

Tali thought she would be used to Prazza dragging her into absurd situations by now. "What's going on here?"

"We have a warrant for the arrest of this quarian. His actions in _Fornax_ magazine were in violation of at least thirteen laws in Citadel space."  
"What? How?" Vrael exclaimed.

"You don't want to know."

The other officer was clearly in agreement. "I used to read _Fornax – _only for the articles, of course – but then there was the issue that had this bastard in it, and...and..." He turned away, clearly distraught by his memory of Prazza. "What...what I saw...it cannot be unseen! After that I was unable to experience any of form of pleasure whatsoever. Every time my wife put on the sexy lingerie all I could see was...was..._him!_ I want to see this bastard rot in a cell for the rest of his damned life!"

"Tali, you have to get me out of this!" Prazza cried as the two officers dragged him away. "I...I told you, I was broke and I needed the money! You have to believe me!"

Why was it, she asked herself, that everything in the galaxy and her life had suddenly turned so much worse after Shepard died?

* * *

After Prazza's arrest, the remaining quarians made their way to the C-Sec post in Zakera Ward where he was being held. Unfortunately, lacking any credits or collateral, it was unlikely that they would be able to get Prazza released on recognizance. That meant he was going to stay in his cell until his trial, whenever that was.

Tali dreaded the prospect of having to deal with C-Sec. It was well-known that they had no love for her people, always regarding them with far more suspicion than other races. They usually assumed that quarians were always trouble, and whenever one was accused of something C-Sec almost always took the side of the complainant. That quarians hid their faces certainly didn't help either, creating the impression that they were "shifty" or "hiding something." Knowing all this, it did not come as a surprise to Tali when the C-Sec officer in charge of this particular station – a turian named Decius, seemed less than pleased to be confronted with four quarians.

"Let me guess, you're here for your friend Prazza," he said, not even bothering to look up from his computer. "Don't waste your time, quarian; I'm sure you couldn't afford to pay his bail. And I'd tell you to find him a good lawyer, but you probably can't afford that, either."

She crossed her arms. "I just need to talk with him."

The turian glanced up at her, his mandibles twitching. "Wait, you're Tali'Zorah, aren't you? You were part of Commander Shepard's crew, along with Garrus Vakarian. Who could forget the two of you at Shepard's side, walking out of the Citadel Tower after bringing down a righteous fury on Saren?"

"Garrus? Is he here?" Seeing a familiar face would make Tali feel a lot better right about now.

Decius shook his head. "I'm afraid not. He quit about a month ago; I think he got fed up with all the red tape and bureaucracy. Didn't say where he was going after that. As for your friend Prazza, I'll let you speak with him, but I have to tell you that it doesn't look good. I don't know what exactly he did, but he's being charged with _obscenity!_"

"I don't know much about Citadel laws," she said, wringing her hands. "Is...is that a bad thing?"

The turian stood up. "Look, you can publish the most depraved, disgusting crap imaginable in Citadel space and still be a thousand lightyears from what any judge would call 'obscene.' Your friend went _beyond_ that. You wouldn't believe how many lawsuits _Fornax_ got slapped with after that issue with your friend in it came out. We wanted to bring in Prazza for his part in it, but we don't exactly have an extradition treaty with the Migrant Fleet. It's a good thing you appeared – literally – when you did."

"What sort of punishment is he facing?"

He shrugged. "That's up for the judge to decide."

Past the C-Sec office was a row of holding cells, guarded by a handful of officers. Tali distinctly remembered her first time coming the Citadel, where she had been given a lengthy interrogation by C-Sec, something that other races were surely never subject to. She had explained to them at length the purpose of her Pilgrimage, although most of it fell on the deaf ears of those who simply assumed she was there to steal something.

"Tali!" Prazza exclaimed when she walked by his cell. "You need to get me out of here! Tell them I didn't do that thing in _Fornax,_ or that other thing, either!"

Prazza was clearly scared out of his wits, and Tali would be lying to herself it she said she didn't feel a sense of satisfaction in seeing him like this. "I don't know, Prazza, you never thought much of my leadership ability before; what makes you think I can do anything to help you?"

"What? No, I mean, I...I never questioned your leadership! Not once! I was only offering...um...a sobering second opinion! Yes, that's it!"

"And just what am I supposed to do, Prazza? Everyone knows what you did in that disgusting magazine. Am I supposed to lie and say you didn't do anything that they're accusing you of? They wouldn't believe me for a second!"

He pressed himself up against the glass of his cell door. "But you're our captain! You have to speak for me at the trial!"

"That's not how Citadel trials work, Prazza. We'd have to get a lawyer to represent you, but...we don't have that kind of money." That meant that Prazza would have to stand alone during the trial, and Tali was sure he'd make a complete hash of things.

"We can't just let him rot a cell, Tali!" said Vrael. "We've got to break him out!"

"What? Are you insane?"

He sighed. "Well it's obvious you don't care for you crew, then!"

"It is not so terrible, being caged so," said Skaal, breaking his long period of silence. "After all, what is life but a prison in which we are doomed to suffer?"

"Aw, screw it all," Juodaan said. "Let's go find us the nearest bar and get stonking wasted!"

With little else they could accomplish at C-Sec, they could do nothing except wait until the trial and Tali had no idea how long that would be. She knew a little about how trials worked on the Citadel, and they were far more formal than what one would encounter on the flotilla. There was a single judge, a jury consisting of Citadel citizens chosen at random, and two people acting as the defence and prosecution. It was not the trial procedure that worried Tali, but the prospect of Prazza being sentenced to life in prison or worse. It would not be her fault if he were convicted, but given her luck as of late, it would not surprise her if everyone in the flotilla blamed her for "one of their own" getting thrown in jail.

Everyone decided to follow Juodaan's suggestion, and they quickly located a club named _Dark Star_ in which they planned to get inebriated. The first time she had set foot in one of the many nightclubs on the Citadel she had been fascinated by it all – the music, the dancing, and the atmosphere – but now she had many other things on her mind. How was it that Prazza could get them in trouble time after time and feel not even the slightest shred of guilt about it? Didn't he care about the crew as a whole? The more she thought it about, the more she realised just how selfish Prazza was, which was almost the worst thing you could call a fellow quarian.

Even if they managed to get Prazza acquitted, they were still lacking a ship, and had no means with which to purchase a new one. The admiralty board was going to be very displeased that she had lost yet another ship, so the least she could do was bring them a new one to make up for it.

"Are you Tali'Zorah?" came a man's voice.

It belonged to a quarian, clad in a suit that was coloured red and gold. "And you are?"

"My name is Saksen'Jääla vas Citadel, and I represent quarians here on the Citadel in legal matters. I have heard that one of your crewmen, the infamous Prazza, is being brought up on charges of obscenity."

_Vas Citadel?_ That was a highly unusual name, as it implied that this station was his home. "You live here?"

He sat down next to her. "I'm sure you've noticed, Tali, that our kind isn't exactly well-liked here or anywhere in the galaxy. Quarians coming here often face discrimination and harassment from C-Sec; I came here to help those who were facing legal troubles or otherwise. The admiralty approved my assignment here, although the idea was mine."

"That...that's a very noble thing," she said quietly. "And I appreciate your offer of help, but I don't think we can afford a lawyer..."

"You don't have to worry about that, Tali'Zorah; the admiralty board pays me to represent quarians gratis."

"Oh, thank you," she said. "It's good to find someone willing to help us."

Saksen held up his hands. "Don't thank me just yet. Your crewman is facing an obscenity charge; there hasn't been one of those in centuries. I'm amazed the law is still on the books. But what he did in that pornographic magazine caused many to go insane or commit suicide; I doubt any jury is going to be feeling merciful, especially to a quarian. And this case won't do anything to bolster the rest of the galaxy's perception of us, either."

"Damn you, Prazza!" she hissed. "Why you must ruin everything? Why did the admiralty send you with us?" Tali had never felt such bitter anger in her life. Prazza had done a great disservice to the quarian people, and she knew he would never show any contrition for it.

"I'm afraid this won't be my first dealing with him," said Saksen. "He and I both came to the Citadel on our Pilgrimages. In a few weeks I had acquired my gift to the fleet, but Prazza had spent all his money on getting himself drunk and other questionable things. When he was nearly broke he begged me to buy his gift for him; I refused, naturally, and he swore his eternal hatred for me. He took that 'job' with _Fornax_ just to get enough money to buy himself passage back to the flotilla; couldn't even pay for his own ship, so he came back empty-handed. Don't imagine his captain was too pleased with that."

"He has still not completed his Pilgrimage," Tali added. "And his family disowned him for what he did. That is why he has no family or ship name."

Saksen laughed. "Doesn't sound like he's worth me getting up in front of a courtroom for, but I don't get paid to pick and choose my clients."

"Can't you just bribe the jury or something?" Vrael asked. "I still think we should bust Prazza out of C-Sec; I'm sure the jury will decide he's guilty the moment they learn he's a quarian."

Tali shook her head. "I don't see how he could do anything that could...drive people insane." She immediately realised that this was an incredibly stupid thing to say, given how Prazza had very nearly driven her to madness with his boundless incompetence.

"When that issue of _Fornax_ came out, the owner of the magazine was arrested the day after. During his trial, the jury read about what, exactly, Prazza had done, but to ensure their sanity, they were only allowed to read one sentence each. One poor bastard read two and had a near-fatal brain aneurysm. This wasn't just some depraved sex act he performed, Tali, this was something that was against the law of the galaxy. The law of the _universe._"

Vrael rolled his eyes. "Damn it, let's just bust him out of C-Sec! It can't be that hard! Their numbers are probably a lot few after the geth attack!"

"Your friend has a rather violent streak," said Saksen.

"He is not my friend."

"Of course. Now, I suppose you'll be needing a place to stay until the trial, yes?"

"That would be appreciated."

"There's a quarian shelter on the opposite end of the ward; I'll take you there. I'm sure they'll be glad to have you – you're famous, you know. You're probably the only quarian most non-quarians can name."

Tali had never desired fame, not wishing to elevate herself above other quarians, but she hoped that maybe, just maybe, her actions might have improved the perception of her people in the galaxy. Unfortunately, when Prazza was brought to trial, he would very likely ruin it. There was now no doubt in Tali's mind that he had been placed on her crew specifically to ensure her failure. What had she done to anger the admiralty board so much? When – if – she got back to the flotilla, she made it her personal mission to find out.

* * *

The quarian shelter was not anything like Tali had expected. Instead of being cramped and crowded like a typical quarian vessel, it was actually quite spacious, being located in a former warehouse. But old habits die hard, and the people here lived here much like they did on the flotilla – in small cubicles arranged in neat rows, each with only a length of cloth over the entrance to provide privacy. Most of the cubicles were empty, a fact Tali quietly pointed out.

"Used to be a lot more," Saksen replied. "After the geth attack C-Sec started getting real paranoid about possible 'geth infiltration.' Only problem is that most of the new hires at C-Sec don't have the faintest idea what a geth actually looks like, so they just assume that they look exactly like quarians. Makes getting past customs a major hassle, so most quarians don't come here on Pilgrimage any more. Instead they go to that hellhole Omega, where the only 'gift' you're likely to find is a knife in the back."

"There's one more thing," Tali said. "We need a ship and we don't have any credits...I don't suppose you'd know how we could get one?"

"There's a number of used ship dealers here on the Citadel; just be sure to stay away from any dealer that's run by a volus, since they'll try to swindle you. As for getting the creds, don't you have someone on the flotilla; family, perhaps, that can wire you the money?"

Her father wasn't going to be pleased with that, and Tali hated the thought of using the fleet's money to get her out of a situation that was (partly) her fault. "No, I...I'd rather not do that."

"I've got an idea on how to get us some creds," said Vrael.

Tali knew she wouldn't like it. "And what is it?"

"Your old captain, Shepard, I'll bet he had loads of creds. Did he have any family?"

Yes, she _definitely_ wasn't going to like this. "He...his mother was an Alliance captain, I think. Look, what are you getting it?"

"Simple. He's dead, but he still must have a bank account somewhere. I say we scope out his account and, if there are any creds there, we take em'."

_"What?_" she said, louder than she intended. "Are you actually suggesting we steal Shepard's money?"

He rolled his eyes. "Look, Tali, he's dead! It's not stealing, not really! It's not like he has any more use for it, anyway."

"I'm sure he would have wanted it to be spent on a worthier cause than getting us a ship!"

"All right, we'll take _only_ however much we need to buy a ship. Don't know why you care so much about some dead man's creds. It's not like he's going to come back from the dead and ask where they went."

Given the absurd situations they had found themselves in as of late, Shepard returning from the dead did not seem quite so unlikely. Still they needed the money if they wanted to get off the Citadel, and Vrael was right that Shepard had no more use for whatever money he possessed. Yet that did not make Tali feel any better about it. Was taking something from a dead man really "stealing?" Then again, if Shepard were still alive, perhaps he would bought her a ship if he had asked. Yet that was a poor justification, at any rate.

There was a much more obvious problem, however. "I can hack through a great many things, Vrael, but even I can't hack into someone's bank account! They have the most advanced computer security available, and if anyone finds out what we're up to it'll be _us_ who are going to trial!"

Vrael waved his hand in casual dismissal of her complaints. "We're not going to hack his bank account. Instead, we create a fake will for Shepard that says he bequeathed all his worldly possessions to you, then all you have to do is go down to the bank and claim his money. It's simple; I've done this lots of times before." That last remark made Tali cast Vrael a fearsome glare.

"I...I don't know..."

"Look, I'll be the one doing it, so if it bothers you that much you can say you had no hand in it."

She sighed, knowing that she was probably going to regret this at some point in the future. "Fine, but if Shepard rises from the dead and asks where his money is, I'm telling him it was you."

"Ha! Over my dead body!"

Vrael, an expert in all manner of shady business, went about creating Shepard's fake will, creating fake digital signatures from numerous fake witnesses and naming himself as the executor, claiming that Shepard had nominated him after he had rescued the commander from a pit of rabid pyjaks. In a malicious streak, he added a line that stated that was Shepard bequeathed all of his worldly possessions to Tali because she was "the love of his life" and then quietly chuckled to himself at his own deviousness.

* * *

The trial was set to begin in three days; a very short length of time due to the perceived severity of Prazza's crime. Tali used that time as an opportunity to look at used ship dealers and see how much a typical ship cost. Vrael had said that they were only going to take as much of Shepard's money as they needed, but Tali quickly realised that, if he were creating a fake will that left everything of his to her, than she was going to end up with all of Shepard's money _and_ possessions. She assuaged her guilt by assuming that Shepard probably did not have that much money (no one joined the Alliance for the pay) and as far as she knew he did not have much property either.

At least that was what she kept saying to herself as she walked into one of Zakera Ward's branches of the United Banking Corporation, the bank to which Shepard's account belonged. The sole teller on duty today was a volus, who, upon seeing a quarian enter the branch, at once decided that he was under no obligation to be anything but as unhelpful as possible. One might think that the volus, since they required exosuits, might be more sympathetic to the quarians than other races. That was completely untrue, of course, as the volus were known to be shrewd when it came to matters of money (which most quarians had little of), and given that their culture was so focused on trade and commerce it was natural that they would regard the quarians – who produced little and consumed much – as an economic blight on the galaxy.

"You are in the wrong place, clanless," he sneered as Tali walked up to the counter. "This is a bank, a place for people with money, and I'm sure that definition excludes your kind."

Being well accustomed to overt racism directed towards her, she ignored his remarks. "Commander Shepard named me as a beneficiary in his will, and I'm here to claim all whatever money was bequeathed to me." As she spoke these words Tali felt a sense of terrible wrongness gnawing at her gut. It wasn't right, taking Shepard's possessions like this.

The volus laughed aloud. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that Commander Shepard, the hero of the Citadel, would bequeath anything to you, clanless?"

"I served with him on the _Normandy_," she replied. "I have his will right here." She tossed the datapad across the counter, trying hard to conceal her nervousness.

"Let me see this..." he growled, looking over the datapad and verifying the information on his omni-tool. "Hmm, yes...signatures from his lawyer and witnesses appear to be valid..._bah!_ Why would Shepard bequeath anything to some clanless like you? What is this galaxy coming to?"

Tali was shocked that Vrael's forged will actually passed inspection. So there _was_ something he was good at, even if it was creating fraudulent documents. "Then I'll withdraw whatever is in Shepard's account to my credit chit here." She didn't have an actual bank account, as most quarians didn't have enough credits to justify opening one.

"You want to put ten million credits on your chit?"

"Yes, I..._what?"_

"Commander Shepard was quite wealthy, it seems. Don't know what you're going to do with all that money, clanless. Maybe buy yourself an exosuit that doesn't look like an asari bled all over it."

Tali walked out of the bank branch, completely stunned. How had Shepard managed to acquire so much money? Were all the weapons, armour, and upgrades he'd scavenged really worth that much? Now she felt like a real criminal. How had Vrael talked her into this, anyhow? She had more credits to her name than any quarian could ever dream of having. This was wrong in so many ways. She couldn't keep this money, and the thought of spending it on herself was utterly abhorrent. After they bought their ship, she would find someone who was better deserving of it.

* * *

There was a media sensation when Prazza's trial began. The courthouse – a large, imposing structure located on the Presidium – was swamped with reporters all trying to get the latest scoop on "the most infamous quarian in the galaxy." Being Prazza's captain, Tali was going to be called upon as a witness, a thought that did not sit well with her. They would probably have her testify as to the character of the accused, and what could she say that could possibly improve Prazza's chances of being acquitted? They would have her swear to tell the truth, and the truth was that Prazza was an idiot who had very nearly caused the entire death of her crew on multiple occasions.

She and the rest of her crew pushed their way through the crowd, ignoring the reporters who wanted to speak with them. The interior of the courthouse, like everything else on the Presidium, was impeccably clean, with sterile white walls and cold steel everyone one looked. The courtroom itself was enormous, and when Tali first stepped inside she realised just how severe the charges against Prazza must be.

Their "lawyer" Saksen'Jääla was already present, and when he spoke with Tali it was clear from the tone of his voice that things looked grim for Prazza. "I'm afraid it doesn't look good," he said. "The evidence of Prazza's involvement with _Fornax_ is abundantly clear, and there countless individuals who would readily attest to the mind-scarring nature of whatever it was he did in that objectionable magazine."

"So what are we going to do?" she asked nervously.

"Our only hope is an ancient quarian legal stratagem called _Hyyvaa Raanna, _a phrase in an archaic dialect that roughly translates as 'confuse the hell out of your opponent.' I will attempt to defend Prazza by crafting my defence to be a stream composed of such utterly baffling illogic and nonsensical rhetoric that they will be forced to concede victory and acquit Prazza."

This did not reassure Tali in the slightest.

"What do we know about the jury?"

"Humans, asari, turians, a volus, but no quarians. I don't think any of them are going to be sympathetic."

An eternity passed before the trial got under way, and all the while Tali sat in silence, wringing her hands. The rest of her crew talked amongst themselves, discussing some moronic scheme to break Prazza out of jail if he were convicted. As she sat there, she reflected on how every day since Shepard died had been worse than the one before, meaning that today was the very worst day of her life. Her actions against Saren might have improved the galaxy's perception of her people, and now Prazza was going to undo it all. The media was going to have a field day with this trial.

At last the trial began. The judge was an asari, either a matriarch or close to it, which was definitely not a good sign. "Court is now in session," she said in a raspy tone of voice. "Please note that I am nearly nine hundred years old, and have no patience for tedious legal formalities. Let us begin." The judge stood up and stared at Prazza with a look that would probably give him nightmares. "Prazza, you stand accused of committing acts of obscenity causing insanity and death. How do you plead?"

"_Not guilty!"_ he thundered, shaking his fist at the judge.

The judge made a put-upon sigh, knowing that this would only prolong the trial. Representing the party with the burden of proof, the public prosecutor began his opening statement. The man was a turian, and unbeknownst to Tali he was the brother of the turian on the Citadel Council, and his manner was just as abrasive. "This quarian standing trial before us today has committed acts of such vileness, of such degenerate depravity, that any sapient being will regard them as offences against all that we hold dear. Furthermore, he has allowed these depraved acts to be published in widely-circulated magazine, causing insanity in many who viewed them, and even drove some to suicide. I ask, no, _demand_ that Prazza suffer the full penalty of law for what he has done!"

Then it was Saksen's turn to give his opening statement. "Ladies and gentlemen of this so-called court, this trial is about a man accused of something that is not even a crime. Yes, what Prazza has done in _Fornax_ magazine may offend the sensibilities of some – nay – the _overwhelming majority_ of sapient beings in the galaxy, but I say this: do we not hold freedom of speech sacred? Are consenting adults not permitted to engage in acts the may offend the mores of society? A man once said 'The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation,' and so I ask all of you here today, what is your business in Prazza's bedroom? Even though he may perform sick, twisted, degenerate acts there that would make a krogan retch, I ask you, _what business do we have there?_ I say proudly that it is our right as sapient beings to perform unspeakably depraved sexual acts, regardless of what others may think of them!"

Being Prazza's captain, Tali was the first witness called to the stand. Her stomach felt like it was twisting itself into knots as she walked the front of the courtroom, feeling the eyes of everyone staring at her. "Tali'Zorah vas Neema nar Rayya, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" the bailiff asked.

"I do."

"As Prazza's captain," said Saksen, beginning the direct examination, "I believe you are in the best position to judge his character. How long has he served under you?"

"Nearly nine months now."

"And given that length of time, what is your impression of Prazza as an individual?"

Tali did not answer immediately, which probably did little to help Prazza's case. She knew the rest of her crew would want her to speak of Prazza in glowing terms, but she could not bring herself to lie to the court, especially after she had sworn to tell the truth. Her crew would hate her for it, but did they not despise her already?

"Prazza is incompetent," she said, laying her hands on the railing of the witness stand. "Many times his thoughtless and selfish actions put us in danger, and he is often rash and inconsiderate."

Every member of her crew, seated near the back of the courtroom, was now was giving her a death glare. "So what you are saying, Tali'Zorah, is that the defendant is, in fact, a gibbering idiot and a simpering man-child?"

"Yes, that is exactly what I am saying."

"Might you say, then, that Prazza does not fully comprehend his actions; that he does not understand the things he does?"

"Objection!" cried the turian prosecutor. "C-Sec interviewed the defendant while he was in custody and found no evidence that he was unable to understand the consequences of his actions."

"Sustained," said the judge in an utterly in an utterly uninterested tone. "The defence must provide sufficient evidence of the defendant's diminished capacity."

Saksen didn't look like he knew how to respond to this. "With all due respect, your honour, the man is clearly a buffoon, a zany, a simpleton! Why, just look at him! I'll bet he's drooling inside his helmet at this very moment!"

The judge just sighed.

The prosecutor than began making his case. "I fail to see the point of the witness' testimony, your honour. Whether the defendant is incompetent or not changes nothing about what he has done! The evidence of his atrocities is there for all to see in _Fornax_! I cannot speak more than one sentence on what he did in that magazine without endangering the sanity of everyone in this courtroom. I can't think of stronger evidence than that!"

And that was it; what more could be said? They had no proof that Prazza had not done what he was accused of, and there were likely no legal tricks or loopholes they could exploit. This trial was all set to be one of the shortest in the history of the Citadel, right until Saksen deployed his "strategy."

He strutted to the middle of the courtroom, bearing the confidence of a man who was putting into motion something best described as being "so stupid it _has_ to work." "Ladies and gentlemen of this so-called court," he began. "I believe I have wasted my breath in arguing my case, because there is a much more pressing concern: the possibility of geth infiltration!"

The turian prosecutor's mandibles twitched in anger. "Objection! I fail to see what relevance this has to the proceedings!"

"Sustained," said the judge, still sounding bored. "'Geth infiltration' has nothing to do with this trial."

Saksen pounded his fist on the table. "It has _everything_ to do with this trial, your honour! When my client was apprehended, it was by two turian C-Sec officers. The captain in charge of the C-Sec post where the defendant was detained was also a turian. And now, we have a turian acting as the prosecutor! After the geth attack, most of the C-Sec officers were killed in action, and most of those were turians. So let me ask the court this, your honour: Where are all these turians in C-Sec coming from? Were they just hiding? Did they just crawl out of the ducts? Did they hatch from eggs? Ladies and gentlemen, _this makes no sense!_ I believe that every single turian involved in the prosecution of my client is, in fact, a _geth infiltrator!_"

There were shocked gasps around the courtroom. Tali just shook her head at the sheer amount of stupidity presently playing out in front of her.

Predictably, the prosecutor had problem with this. "Objection! Your honour, I find these remarks extremely objectionable!"

"So says the _geth infiltrator!_" said Saksen, pointing his finger at the prosecutor. "It is an indisputable fact that my client is a quarian. Geth hate quarians, so it is logical that the prosecution, being a _geth infiltrator,_ would have every reason to want my client thrown in prison! Why, I'm surprised he hasn't already started shooting."

"He's right!" the bailiff exclaimed. "This whole courtroom could be filled with geth infiltrators!" He then drew his gun and pointed it at the prosecutor. "One false move and I'll scrap your synthetic ass!"

The level of stupidity now taking place in the courtroom was so strong, so infectious, that even the judge was unable to resist it. "Ladies and gentlemen of the court, I hereby dismiss all charges against the defendant on the grounds that the prosecution is suspected of being a geth infiltrator."

The courtroom quickly descended into a panic, with shouted accusations being thrown about whom or what might be a geth infiltrator. Saksen quietly motioned for Tali, Prazza, and the rest of the crew to surreptitiously make their way out of the courtroom before people started shooting.

"I...I can't believe that worked," she said as they hurriedly made their way along the Presidium to the nearest elevator. "You made a mockery of the entire justice system, but it worked..."

Saksen laughed. "You know, we quarians were never really known for our prowess in battle. Instead we had to rely on cunning and guile; confusing our enemies with feints and dodges. I'm glad to see it works just as well in the courtroom."

Prazza was understandably ecstatic at being acquitted. "Ha! The system can't hold _The 'Praz!_ I've struck a blow for free speech everywhere in the galaxy and set legal precedent – now no one will ever have to fear prosecution when performing monstrously degrading sexual acts!" He followed this up by making several pelvic thrusts.

They took the nearest elevator down to the wards, which, in usual Citadel fashion, moved much too slowly. The rest of her crew took this opportunity to lay into her for what she had said about Prazza during the trial.

"I never thought you'd say such things about one of your own crew, Tali!" said Vrael. "I'm _so_ glad to know that when I'm wrongfully accused you're going to have my back. I suppose if it were Juodaan or Skaal the first thing you'd mention is his drinking problem and his depression."

She was not going to back down. "Everything I said about Prazza is the truth. He is rash, selfish, needlessly impulsive, and damned near got us all killed more times than I can count!"

"Funny, I could say the exact same thing about you, Tali," Vrael said.

Juodaan burst into laughter, having remained silent until now. "Oh, _burned!_ Now turn up the heat!"

Skaal then got in on it. "Tali'Zorah still foolishly believes that there is something worth saving in the galaxy, and that elevates her above the rest of us. How wrong she is. She would not have said such things about Prazza during the trial if she opened her eyes and realised that we are _all_ vermin."

"Prazza is a valuable member of this crew," said Vrael. "He's gotten us _out_ of many difficult situations. He showed the galaxy the value of the quarian people!"

"By posing in a pornographic magazine?"

He sighed and shook his head. "You're just not going to let that go, are you Tali?"

It was futile to argue with him, with any of them. All that mattered now was getting a ship and making their way back to the flotilla, where she would undoubtedly face yet another dressing-down from the admirals. Maybe bringing a replacement ship would be enough. Whatever happened, it was unlikely that she would be sent on another mission for a while. Every assignment she had been given had ended catastrophically, and while she would argue until she was blue in the face that none of it was her fault, the admirals would probably blame her, regardless.

Then there was the matter of Shepard's money. It didn't belong to her and when she got back to the fleet the first thing she was going to do was find someone more deserving of it than her. Her crew would probably disapprove, but Tali had long discounted the idea of ever winning their approval, deciding that it was a potentially universe-annihilating impossibility that was better off not attempted.


	10. Twilight of the Thunder God

Chapter 10 – Twilight of the Thunder God

* * *

The ship Tali ended up purchasing was another human-built ship, roughly the same size as the one she had lost. It had no name, and Tali was not in any mood to try to think of one. For a used ship it was in quite good condition, and as they travelled to the nearest mass relay Tali found that the engines did not require much tweaking to get them up to her standards. The interior was dimly lit and appointed with grey and blue hues, which very much reminded her of the _Normandy._ The used ship dealer had explained to her that the previous owners of this vessel found the interior to be much too dark, but most quarians preferred lower light levels.

No one from her crew came to talk to her for the entire length of the trip back to the Migrant Fleet. Not that Tali had any desire to speak with them, but sitting alone in the captain's quarters for hours on end was rather unnerving, to say the least. Quarians were very social people, and yet her life was one long, slow, descent into isolation. First her mother had died, then her father had become too absorbed in his work to ever have any time for her. The friends she'd made on the _Normandy_ had been thrown to the wind, and she doubted that she would ever see them again. And now her crew, the people she was _supposed_ to trust and care about, despised her, and the feeling was mutual. This was not a situation that could end well. They had already lost one person – Prazza's girlfriend – and she was definitely not the last. Tali knew that her squad's antics would get them all killed one day, sooner more likely than later. She was amazed that they had not _already_ gotten themselves killed.

Contrary to her expectations, the admirals had little to say to her when she returned. They were understandably annoyed that she had lost yet another ship, but bringing back a replacement did much to lessen their anger. None of them were interested in the strange aliens that had attacked them; instead the admirals seemed preoccupied by something else entirely and more or less blew her off when she gave her mission report. They did not tell her what they had on their minds, but Tali knew what it was they were worried about.

Quarians were exceptional engineers, yet even then there were limits to their abilities. Many of the ships in the flotilla were centuries old, and after that length of time they became harder and harder to maintain. There were few parts available for ships more than fifty years old, let alone three hundred, so often parts had to be manufactured by the quarians themselves. Eventually, maintaining a vessel became more effort than it was worth and they would be forced to scrap it. That meant its crew would have to be reassigned to other vessels, placing an even greater burden on them. They could always find new ships, but the rate at which older vessels were being scrapped was already outpacing the rate at which they could be replaced. At some point they were simply going to run out of room on the remaining ships, meaning that some quarians would be forced to leave the fleet and even stricter population controls would have to be enacted. Unless they found a planet to settle, their race was doomed to a slow, agonising extinction.

Some people, such as admiral Koris, suggested that they ought to forget about ever reclaiming the homeworld and instead settle some other world. But to Tali (and many others) this was simply unacceptable. Settling another planet would mean that every quarian alive today would have to give up the idea of ever being free of his or her suit. They would have to cannibalise most their ships just to get their colony on its feet, which meant that they would be stuck there until they had the ability to build new ships, which might be several generations. Worst all, settling another world would do nothing to ease the pain of having lost their homeworld. It meant giving up, abandoning all hope of ever returning home.

Taking back the homeworld, unfortunately, was a distant dream at best. Tali knew that throwing the entire fleet at the geth would do nothing except get them all killed. The only way they could ever reclaim it would be if all the spacefaring races in the galaxy united to exterminate the geth, and no one was rushing to gather an army.

Of course, all this might be irrelevant anyway. If the Reapers came back Tali doubted that the fleet would last long against them. How many ships were destroyed just to bring down _one_ of them? And those were modern warships, not the rickety, centuries-old ships of the flotilla that required constant maintenance just to remain operational.

Several months passed by in a blur. Tali wanted to mark the anniversary of the _Normandy's _destruction, but she didn't know how. No one else on the fleet cared. No one else in the _galaxy_ cared. The Citadel Council's move to completely discredit Shepard was complete, and if you so much as said the word "Reaper" around anyone they'd laugh you off as kook or some gullible dolt. Knowing the truth and being unable to do anything about it, Tali quietly slid into a haze of resignation and despair. She went about her duties on the _Neema_ with even greater fervour than usual, thinking that throwing herself into her work would keep from thinking about the Reapers, about Shepard. She quickly realised that there was not enough work in the galaxy to prevent her from dwelling on those things.

Two months later the admirals came to her with a mission. Tali was shocked, certain that her lack of success on prior missions had doomed from ever being assigned to another. It was another mineral-surveying mission, although this time the admiralty assured her that her ship had been outfitted with a salarian-made mineral scanner that was supposed to be much safer and far less likely to cause stars to explode than the Perkele5000 scanner. The system they were sending her to was thoroughly uninteresting save for its potential mineral deposits, and she was reasonably sure that there was nothing there that might blow them up, send them back in time, fling them into an alternate dimension, or doom them to whatever other ghastly fate the universe could dream up.

As she expected, she wasn't getting a new crew. It was the usual gang of clods, only this time they appeared to have gotten _worse._ Prazza nearly all of his time playing that stupid MMORPG on his omni-tool, even when he was supposed to be working. Everyone on his ship had long since given up hope of ever getting Prazza to do any useful work for any length of time, and so they had adopted a strategy of simply ignoring him. Juodaan's vice of alcohol had rendered him all but dead, unable to stand most of the time. Skaal was his usual morose self, barely ever speaking now, and Vrael wasn't even bothering to hide his criminal acts any more. Tali did not know it, but he had, through the creation of fraudulent wills, managed to drain the bank accounts of all the dead crewmembers of the _Normandy _who had no families to bequeath their wealth to. He did this to spite Tali, but refrained from telling her, knowing full well that she would likely react by shooting him in the face. Vrael was still angry that Tali had returned Shepard's money to his mother, Hannah Shepard, who planned to donate to various charities. It was just one more thing that convinced Vrael that Tali cared more about humans than her own kind.

With barely any words between her and the crew, their ship, now named the _Kamala Kohtalo,_ was on its way to the nearest mass relay. While Tali slept, Juodaan was fumbling around the engine room, staring in consummate confusion at the control panel. There was a sudden clarity in his booze-addled mind, and when he looked over the seemingly-incomprehensible array of buttons, switches, and displays Juodaan realised that _he knew absolutely nothing about how engines worked at all._ He tried to think of the reason he had been named Tali's chief engineer, and he could not remember anything. Nevertheless he was confidant that if he just stared hard enough at the FTL drive readouts he would figure it out before long. But after nearly an hour of staring, he still had no idea what anything did or what anything meant. What was a "Weyl tensor?" What was a "Lorentz factor?"What were "Einstein field equations?" So far all he could say that was that the engines made the ship go forward, and he wasn't quite sure of _that_, either. Unable to suss out what anything did just by looking at it, Juodaan decided that the best course of action would be to push various buttons and switches and randomly fiddle with settings until their purpose became clear. Besides, he reasoned, they weren't at FTL speeds, so what harm could there be in making a few adjustments to the FTL drive?

But the mass relays were built on unknown technology, so no one who designed this vessel could have anticipated what might happen when a ship with an improperly set, albeit deactivated, FTL drive went through a mass relay.

Tali'Zorah discovered this when she woke up to find bright sunlight streaming the window of the captain's quarters.

_What the...?_

She stood up and saw that there was a bright blue sky outside, and that their ship was now resting amid lush, green rolling hills. At first she wondered if she were dreaming, but it quickly became apparent that she was not. Gathering her wits about her she stormed into the cockpit where she found the rest of crew staring out the window, equally puzzled as she was.

"What happened?" she said. "Where are we?"

Vrael answered her slowly. "We're...uh..._here."_

"Well what does the navigational computer say?" she asked impatiently.

"Nothing; it says we're in dark space, but this place certainly doesn't look very 'dark' to me."

Dark space, or more accurately intergalactic space, was the part of the universe that was between galaxies. It was the most empty place in the universe, being close to a perfect vacuum, with only 10 to 100 hydrogen atoms per cubic metre. That was clearly not the case here, as they were obviously on a planet that had a sun, even though such things should not be found outside of galaxies. Tali was beginning to feel the dreadful (but now very familiar) sensation that something had gone very wrong and they were now in some place they should not be.

"What's the status of our ship?"

"Everything's fine, except the FTL drive. Juodaan was screwing around with it just before we went through the last mass relay, but we never engaged it. It shouldn't have done anything to alter our destination."

Unlike many of the other catastrophes that had befallen her, this was not something that was caused by some impossible act tearing the universe a new one. Instead it was an unforeseen interaction between their ship's improperly configured FTL drive and the mass relay. A relay did not transport a ship to a precise destination, but rather flung them within an area that might be several thousand kilometres wide. When their ship had passed through, the miscalibrated FTL drive had somehow caused the relay to become exponentially more inaccurate, sending them more than 100,000 light years beyond the galaxy. That they had landed in this place (wherever it was) was only due to an amazing, almost-impossible coincidence.

That left the issue of how, precisely, they were going to get back to where they had been just moments prior. Juodaan, who had until now been silent, was presently pacing about the cockpit, agitated about something.

"My booze sense is tingling," he said. "There's vast quantities of alcohol around here somewhere; I can feel it!"

"What are you talking about?" said Tali, annoyed.

"My booze sense! All quarians have it, but only some of us are attuned to it. We can detect the smallest amounts of alcohol vapours in the air and follow them to the source. And there must be a whole lot of it going by what I'm feeling right now. Come on, men! Let's get us some liquor! _Wooo!_"

Juodaan ran off to the airlock, and before Tali could do stop him he and the rest of the crew were running across the surface of the planet (or whatever this place was). Seeing no choice but to follow Tali went after them, stopping to take in the world around here. Wherever they were, this place was strikingly beautiful, with deep blue skies and lush vegetation that was an almost impossibly bright shade of green. The sun was nearly directly overhead, even though there should not have been any stars in intergalactic space.

Behind her, not far from their ship, was an immense gorge crossed by a rainbow. This was no mere trick of the light, as it remained fixed in its position as she walked about. It looked to her eyes like the rainbow formed a bridge over the gorge, but surely that was just silly, wasn't it? Nevertheless it was another sign that they probably in some place they shouldn't be, and getting out of her ought to be their top priority. Obviously her crew didn't share that opinion, as they were now bounding across the grass like a gaggle of idiots.

As she tried to catch up with them she brought up her omni-tool and began a quick scan of the area. It had an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, identical to the one on Earth, yet this was clearly _not _Earth. She patched her omni-tool into the ship's sensors, hoping to get a better fix on the location of this planet, only to learn that this was not, in fact, a planet, but rather a large, flat disk measuring several thousand kilometres in diameter. Had she been any other person she would have been panicking right now, but Tali was so used to absurd situations by now that she merely took it in stride.

Her crew had come to a stop just ahead, and when Tali caught up with them she saw that a tall, pale-skinned human was standing before them. He had a sword in one hand (who carried swords any more?) and a large battle horn in the other, but what really set him apart was how he was dressed, looking terribly similar to what someone in those godawful RPGs Prazza played might look like.

"I am Heimdall, guardian of Asgard. What manner of wights are you that come hither so strangely-clad? Speak, I charge you!"

All of them turned and looked at each other with '_what the hell?'_ expressions on their faces. Tali, being the captain, spoke first. "I am Tali'Zorah of the Migrant Fleet. Our ship had an engine malfunction and we ended up here, wherever 'here' is."

That only confused the man, who glared at Tali as if she had just said that the sky was green. "You look not like any valkyrie or _dísir_ I have ever seen! Speak your purpose!"

Prazza stepped forward. "Did you say 'valkyrie?' Well one of my _Galaxy of Fantasy_ PCs is a level 87 valkyrie. I use her mostly as my DPSer, and I can get loads of XP using her during PvP PuGs, as long I'm not playing with some noobs who cause a TPK. Most of the time, though, I use my level 98 Ardat-Yakshi mezzer/debuffer, although that might change when the latest patch comes out, 'cause I heard Ardat-Yakshi are pretty OP right now, especially after min/maxing."

He just stared at Prazza with a blank expression. "You speak words yet say nothing."

_Well if _that_ isn't the truth,_ Tali thought. "Look, we only wish to return to where we were. We didn't meant to come here-"

"He has an evil air about him!" the man cried, pointing at Prazza. "I will leave it to the Allfather himself to decide what is to be done with you. You are to come with me, or I shall slay you all where you stand!"

Vrael drew his pistol and pointed it at Heimdall. "Or I could just shoot you."

In a flash Heimdall drew his sword and sliced Vrael's gun neatly in two, making it clear that this was no ordinary blade. Vrael just looked at his now-useless weapon with a stunned expression on his face.

"Well...well _that_ wasn't very nice..."

So they had no choice but to follow this strange person. Tali quietly brought up her omni-tool and did a search for the words "Heimdall" and "Asgard," then shared her findings with the crew. What she had found was absolutely ludicrous, and yet that did not surprise her in the slightest.

"According to my omni-tool's database, 'Asgard' is the realm of the gods in human mythology, specifically the people of early mediaeval Scandinavia."

Vrael snorted. "I'm sure you're a goddamn expert on the subject, you human-lover, you."

Heimdall just laughed at her. "Mythology? Oh, how sad it is to see that the mighty Æsir have been reduced to mere 'mythology!' There was a time when the people of the north revered us, but then they forsook their faith for a foreign god, and then they stopped believing in gods altogether. Now we only serve as the basis for cheap, unoriginal role-playing games and the inspiration for countless heavy metal bands."

"Wait," she said, stopping in her tracks. "You mean the mythology is _true?_"

"Of course! All the other gods humans thought up – the Christian one, the Greek ones, the Egyptian ones, the Celtic ones...none of them exist. We're the only true gods. But you must know that we do not blame people for following other gods. Humans have dreamt up so many religions; what are the chances you'd ever choose the right one?"

This discussion was much too advanced for Prazza. "So if this is like an RPG," he said, "then I nominate Tali to be our tank. It's her job to hold enemy aggro while we get to safety."

She ignored him. "So what you're saying is that the only human religion that has any truth to it is one no one follows any more?"

Heimdall nodded. "Sad, is it not? We could have Thor ride his chariot across the skies of Midgard, but you see, there's a rule about being a god that states that you're not allowed to appear to your people in any manner except those which might easily be explained as natural phenomena."

Over the next hill the quarians were treated to a magnificent site. It was a fortress or a hall of some sorts, rising majestically into the sky. Its walls shone brilliant gold, bright enough that even with Tali's helmet on it almost hurt to look at it. What amazed her most, however, was the sheer size of the building. It was so large it didn't appear to move as they drew closer to it, and it stood high enough that its peak reached through clouds.

"This is Valhalla," said Heimdall. "The hall of the fallen. All humans who die gloriously in battle, chosen by the valkyries, come here. We call them the _einherjar,_ and they are finest warriors in all of existence."

Prazza's mind was still on his silly role-playing games. "I remember the Valhalla DLC for _Galaxy of Fantasy._ What a load of crap! Walk into the place and you immediately get ganked by a horde of berserkers! Gotta have some good CC skills for that."

"My booze sense is off the scale!" Juodaan exclaimed. "That building most have more liquor in it than anywhere else in the galaxy!"

"Indeed it does! Here the ale cups are never empty; as soon as the last drop is drunk the cup refills itself."

Juodaan was now more excited than Tali had ever seen him, though in a short while he would probably be comatose once again. They were now near the gates of the hall, with each door reaching nearly fifty metres in height. "This is Valgrind," said Heimdall. "It is one of the five hundred and forty doors that lead into the hall, from which the _einherjar_ will storm forth during Ragnarök. Inside awaits Allfather Odin himself, ruler of Asgard, the High One, Lord of the Æsir, the Battle Enchanter, the Wanderer, the Spear God, the God of Victory!"

"I'm just here to get drunk," Juodaan muttered.

In the back of her mind Tali was still worrying about how they were going to back home, but she was too much in awe of this world to think about that at present. When they entered into Valhalla she was rendered speechless by the sight before her. It was so large that many of the ships in the Migrant Fleet could easily fit inside, and like any quarian ship it was filled with people. All of them were human, or course, and they were all seated at long, wooden tables that appeared to stretch out forever. There must have been thousands of people here, many of whom dropped what they doing to look at the quarians, obviously unused to seeing such strange-looking individuals.

At the far end of the hall was a man seated in a throne atop a dias and surrounded by men wielding large, two-handed battle axes. He was aged, with long white hair and beard, and when Tali looked closer she saw that he was missing one of his eyes. Two black birds sat on the arms of the throne, belonging to some species of Earth avian Tali was unfamiliar with. While the man looked human, she sensed that he was something else entirely. They were far, far from their home, in a place no quarian should ever be.

Standing next to the old man was a huge, hulking warrior, standing nearly seven feet in height and possessing wild-looking, blood-red hair. In his hands he carried an enormous hammer, obviously a weapon, and when Tali scanned it with her omni-tool it revealed that the hammer was made out of a solid form of neutron-degenerate matter, which should have been impossible as it would have weighed more than several planets combined.

"Allfather Odin, I found these five not far from Bifröst. I know not where they come from, only that they are _not_ einherjar!"

"I know who they are, Heimdall. The purple-clad one is Tali'Zorah." His voice was deep and gravelly; the sort of voice one immediately associated with great wisdom.

The huge, hammer-wielding man stepped forward, speaking in a voice that was so low Tali could almost feel it rumbling in her gut. "She is the _Stjarna-tortímari?"_

"Indeed. I know many tales of great warriors, such the wise Egill Skallagrímsson, the sagacious Njáll Þorgeirsson and his most worthy comrade Gunnar Hámundarson who was brought low only through the treachery of his wife. I know of the matchless Grettir Ásmundarson, who bravely fought his enemies to death on the island of Drangey. But never have I ever met one who could shatter a star, who could sail the rivers of time, and who could travel vast distances in a single bound."

Prazza bristled at the thought of this man praising Tali like this, supreme god of the Æsir or not. "She is not worthy of your praise!"

Odin glared at Prazza with his one remaining eye. "And what is your name, impudent one?"

"I am Prazza. You should be in awe."

He sat back in his throne. "That is a very infamous name; a very _hated_ name."

"Wait," said Tali. "You know of us? Of quarians?"

"You think I know naught of what happens beyond these walls? There is _nothing_ in all the nine worlds that escapes me."

"And what do you know of Prazza?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"This hall is a place of revelry and joy. I will not shame it by speaking of this man's foul deeds. It is only for you, Tali'Zorah, that we have not slain him where he stands."

The large, red-haired man was clearly upset at hearing this. "This wretch is not worthy of standing in this hall! He might as well be one of the cursed _hrímþursar_!_"_

"Still your tongue, Thor. Must your solution to every problem involve smashing it with your hammer?"

This was enough to send him shrinking back to where he had been standing. "But, it's my hammer..."

"You must forgive my son, he tends to have a rather...simplistic...mindset. But a better warrior against the _jötnar_, there is none."

Tali was confused. "The...what?"

Odin smiled slightly. "The ancient race of giants who seek to destroy all we hold dear. 'Reapers' your people call them. Soon Ragnarök shall be upon us – the final battle that will herald the end of the world. Today we drink and celebrate, as we have every day before this one, but when the times comes, every man within this hall shall storm forth to meet our enemies on the field of Vígríðr."

"You...you mean you would actually help us fight the Reapers?"

"It is what we are for. All shall fight in the coming battle, and many shall die. No true warrior can ask for a better end than that. But let us not talk of death and ending. Here the ale cups and mead horns are never empty!"

That was enough to put Juodaan into a fit of barely-contained excitement. He sat down at one of the long tables and quickly got to work setting himself up for some gross overindulgence. He took out a short length of hose from one of his suit pockets, then attached one end to his mask and put the other in the cup. In less than five seconds he had emptied it, and to Tali's amazement, the cup instantly refilled itself, as if by magic. This elicited a mad fit of laughter from Juodaan, who just as quickly emptied the cup again.

"There is one more thing," said Tali. "We need to get back home. I...I don't suppose you'd know a way?"

Odin ran his hand through his beard. "'Tis simple enough. Cross the rainbow bride Bifröst and you shall be returned whence you came. I must warn that once you leave, you will not be able to return. I am amazed that you found your way here in the first place."

It was not so amazing to Tali, who was quite accustomed to bizarre and improbable happenings by this point. She was about to ask this Odin character another question when she heard a familiar voice.

"Tali?"

She spun around and nearly fell over at what she saw. "_Kaidan?"_

"What are you doing here, Tali? You...you're not dead, are you?"

"N...no!" she stammered, completely floored by it all. "But you...you are! You died on Virmire!"

"I did, and I wound up here. I know, not what you'd expect. But it's a great place once you get used to it."

Tali recovered her composure, and her shock turned to her relief at meeting one of her teammates. During her time on the _Normandy_ she hadn't talked much with Kaidan Alenko, as she had the impression that he was a rather private person (humans were strange like that). Still, it was an immense relief to see someone familiar.

"The thing is, once you're here you're not allowed to leave," Kaidan continued. "We still hear things though, like what happened to Shepard..."

"Shepard? Is he here?" The thought of meeting him gave her a surge of hope that felt like getting hit with a jolt of electricity.

Unfortunately her hope was soon to be crushed. "No, he's not," said Kaidan. "It's the damndest thing, too. We all knew he was dead, and that he was _definitely_ worthy of being brought to this place. When you die, they have the valkyries bring you here, but for some reason they couldn't find Shepard."

Vrael snorted. "Probably 'cause he was disintegrated on re-entry."

Kaidan shook his head. "No, they know how to deal with things like that. I don't know the reason; maybe Shepard is on a whole other level of 'dead' that makes it impossible for him to reach the afterlife."

Tali stepped back. "That's horrible!"

"Cry me a river," Vrael muttered.

She ignored him. "And no one cares that he's gone. The Council and Alliance tore apart everything he said."

"I can see the Council doing that, but the Alliance? I can't believe they'd turn on him like that. It's just not like-" Kaidan paused and looked over at Juodaan, who was slumped over the table. "I think you're friend has had a little too much to drink."

"Oh...yes...he does that a lot..."

Vrael tried to rouse Juodaan from his torpor to no avail. "Come on," he growled. "Get up, you drunken sot!"

When he did not move Tali started getting nervous. She patched her omni-tool into Juodaan's suit and brought up his bio-stats. "Heart rate falling! Brain activity dropping! Blood alcohol level...fifty?"

Vrael looked up at her. "Fifty _what?"_

"Fifty percent!"

He rolled his eyes. "That's impossible. He would have died of alcohol poisoning long before then."

"I wouldn't worry," said Kaidan. "You can't actually die here. During the day we all fight to hone our skills, and anyone who gets killed just pops right back up again."

"Amazing!" Prazza exclaimed. "It's like a thousand-player deathmatch server with no respawn timer!"

As if on cue, Juodaan slowly got back up. "Ugh, what happened?"

"You drank yourself to death," said Vrael. "In less than a minute. That's got to be some sort of record."

Tali decided to continue her conversation with Kaidan a little further away from her crew. "I must apologise for my crew, they...they're..." She struggled to speak the word that was on her tongue. "They're...idiots."

"I noticed. Who'd you piss off to get stuck with them?"

"The fleet's admiralty board, but I don't know why. I will say that our missions haven't been boring, although I don't know if that's a good thing or not."

"So how did you get here, anyway?" he asked. "Only dead people come here, and I'm pretty sure that aliens aren't supposed to be here either."

"I...I don't know. We were going through a relay and then all of a sudden we were here. I'm sure it was Juodaan messing with the engines; he's supposed to be our chief engineer, but he doesn't know anything about engines at all! That, and he's _always_ drunk!" Tali stopped herself from ranting, knowing that nothing good would come of it.

"Let's go, Tali," said Vrael, interrupting their conversation. "We're getting out of here. Way too many humans, and not enough of them are female."

This was too much for Juodaan, who had decided that this was the place he was meant to be. "No, no! You won't take me! You can't! This is the best afterlife ever! This is where I belong! I won't go! No no no no no!"

"You're coming even if I have to drag you!" Vrael snarled, and began dragging Juodaan along by his arm, all the while he was kicking and screaming.

"No, no! It's not fair! You can't do this! I'll hate you forever!"

Tali looked back at Kaidan, unable to conceal her embarrassment at the behaviour of her crew. "I guess it's time for us to go. It was good to see you, Kaidan."

"You too, Tali. Keep fighting the good fight."

His words were nearly drowned out by Juodaan's howling, which was drawing stares from the rest of the people gathered. It was very much like a child throwing a tantrum when he didn't get his way, and after seeing him like this Tali contemplated locking him out of the ship's engine entirely. It was something she should have done a long time ago.

Somewhat jaded from her previous experience, it was hardly surprising that Tali was a little less shocked at having met a dead person than most people would be in a similar situation. As they stepped out of Valhalla and into the bright sunlight, she began to have the first inkling of just how absurd the circumstances were – being in a place straight out of human mythology that happened to exist in real life somewhere far beyond the galaxy. She immediately decided not to dwell on that realisation, fearing it would be hazardous to her mental health, which she guessed was already in a rather fragile state.

No sooner had they left the hall then Thor, the hulking, hammer-wielding warrior, was standing before them, eyes afire with hatred. "I care not what my father says, this man Prazza must die! He has an evil stench about him!" He gestured at him with his hammer. "I challenge you to _hólmganga! _You are not the like of a man, and not a man in your heart!"

Prazza crossed his arms in defiance."You challenge me to what now?"

"A duel, this one to the death!"

"You want to take on the _'Praz?_ Are you insane? I've shit bigger than you!"

Tali grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. "What are you doing? My omni-tool says that this man's hammer has more mass than three planets put together! He'll kill you in every way you can be killed!"

She didn't expect him to listen, but something must have gotten through to him, because he began backing away from Thor, obviously frightened.

"On second though, screw you. I'm not going to waste time fighting with you."

Thor inhaled sharply, looking as if he might explode into an unstoppable rage at any second. "You...you dare turn away my challenge?"

"Yeah, I do. Deal with it."

"Then I name you _niðingr,_ the worst scoundrel who ever lived! All who know your name shall know of your cowardice; they will call your _argr_ – 'unmanly' – and spit on the ground you walk upon! Your deeds will counted amongst the most shameful and wretched acts in memory, and when you die, it will be in a manner worthy of only mockery and derision!" He then thundered off, leaving the quarians in a rather awkward silence.

"What's that guy's problem?" said Prazza as they continued on their way.

Tali looked back at the enormous building behind them, wondering if anyone back on the flotilla would ever believe her if she told them about this place. It was probably a good idea not tell anyone, as they would likely assume she was insane. Her crew might back her up, but then again they might not, just to make her come across as a raving lunatic. They were downright malicious like that.

"I'm amazed by this mission, Tali," said Vrael as they climbed back into their ship. "No one died and nothing exploded."

According to Odin, all they had to do to leave this place was fly over the "rainbow bridge" and they would be back in familiar space. First, though, she had to undo all the meddling Juodaan had done to the engines, which took nearly a half hour. Juodaan himself was lying unconscious in his quarters, having consumed more alcohol than anyone else in the galaxy in such a short period of time. Tali was no doctor, but she knew that something in his body had to give if he kept up the way he did.

As soon as the engines were online she returned to the cockpit of the _Kamala Kohtalo. _The mass effect core kicked in and the ship smoothly rose into the air, only to bang against the ground a few times due to Vrael's inept piloting. Ahead was the rainbow bridge, a sight that Tali found both spectacular and spectacularly silly at the same time. The ship moved forward over the bridge, rocking side to side, again due to the fact that Vrael knew as much about piloting as Juodaan knew about engines. The bridge spanned a chasm that was so deep Tali could not see to the bottom of it, but she had little time to enjoy the view as the world around them suddenly stretched out into infinity before it was replaced by the black void of space.

The first thing Tali did was check the navigational computer, which told her that they were in the exact same place they had been just before they had been flung into Asgard. Having not sustained any damage during the brief excursion beyond the galaxy, they continued onwards to their destination, where they would engage in some thoroughly routine and uninteresting mineral scanning before returning to the fleet.

During that time Tali was totally consumed with what Kaidan had said about Shepard. If Asgard was where humans went they died, then there was no good reason why Shepard should not have been there. She refused to believe that it was because Shepard was "deader than dead." There had to be another explanation. Maybe he was not really dead. Yet she refused to allow herself to think that, either. It was just too painful to hope for something like that only to have your hope crushed. That was the sort of hope that could consume you and drive you to obsession. No, she _had_ to accept that Shepard was gone. It was stupid and selfish on her to dwell on him like this. Over a year had passed since his death and still she had not gotten over it.

Yet it was so hard _to_ get over him. There was so much unfinished business of his, so many things that still had to be done, that Tali didn't _want_ to move on. If she didn't continue what Shepard started, then who would? But what could she do – one woman from a race that no one respected? It all felt so _wrong, _like an itch in the back of her mind that she couldn't scratch. All she could do was carry on as she had, flying around the galaxy with a bunch of dolts who were probably going to get her killed, sooner rather than later.


	11. An Earth Shattering Kaboom

Chapter 11 – An Earth-Shattering Kaboom

* * *

"You ever read that new fantasy series, _Aria of Flame and Frost?"_

Prazza recoiled in mock horror at Vrael's suggestion. "Oh _keelah, _don't get me started on that 'modern fantasy' crap! It's all the same: everything's gotta be dark, gritty, and nasty, filled with characters who are unlikeable bastards just so the author can say the story has 'moral ambiguity.' You shouldn't be reading that crap; it rots your brain!"

Vrael gave him an offended glare. "So I suppose you read those old-fashioned fantasy novels, the ones where some bland, two-dimensional hero who's all pure incorruptible pureness fights some generic 'dark lord' who has no reason to be evil except that he's the antagonist?"

"That's a damn sight better than what authors today are writing!" he said, slamming his fist down on the table. "_Aria of Flame and Frost_ doesn't even have any real fantasy elements to it, except that 'sir' is spelt with an 'e' and people talk about dragons a lot!"

Skaal, who had remained silent for nearly the entire mission, finally weighed in. "All this talk of 'fantasy novels' is so pointless. It is yet another reminder of what boundless misery our lives encompass; that we must seek solace in such literary tripe."

"And just what sort of thing do _you_ like to read, Skaal?" Vrael sneered. "Let me guess, it's all horribly depressing?"

"I like romance novels," he said, in a completely flat and serious tone.

Vrael laughed. "That's the first funny thing you've ever said."

"I'm serious."

The cockpit was silent for several seconds. "You mean, you actually _like_ that crap? With all the 'heaving bosoms' and 'engorged members?'"

Skaal remained totally sober in his tone. "If there is one thing that brings the smallest light of joy to my otherwise bleak existence, it is a simple story of some young, virtuous maiden soothing the anguished soul of some man with a dark and troubled past. I don't even care that all the stories have this exact same story."

"Whatever," said Prazza, going back to playing _Galaxy of Fantasy_ on his omni-tool.

Tali had no choice but to endure their conversation, as the mineral scanner was entirely automated, locating deposits of valuable metals and transmitting the data back to the flotilla. Still, given what had happened the last time they went mineral-surveying, she was not taking any chances. She kept a constant eye on the scanner read out, ready to act on any sign that something was going horribly wrong. Nothing did, however, and to Tali's great relief it seemed like this mission would be a simple affair, with the exception of their brief detour into the realm of human mythology, of course.

Her mind kept going back to a message she had received from Shala earlier that day. According to her, a man named Vren'Taara had been speaking to Rael'Zorah a great deal, expressing interest in Tali as "possible candidate for marriage" (to use his exact words, which Tali found horribly clinical). The news came as a shock to her, mainly because she had barely spoken to this Vren'Taara during her time aboard the _Neema._ How could decide that he wanted to _marry_ her after such a ludicrously short length of time? Obviously love didn't factor into it; only Tali's position as an admiral's daughter. That made her an object of desire for many politically ambitious men, which were precisely the sort of people Tali wanted nothing to do with, and she certainly couldn't imagine spending her life with them.

And there was no doubt in her mind that whatever man she chose, she was going to be with him for life. Given that quarians could not engage in even the most basic acts of affection without risking their health, nobody pursued a relationship for casual reasons. People entered into marriage with the expectation that it was a lifelong commitment, and the word "divorce" was scarcely mentioned. For that reason there was tremendous pressure on quarians to chose their partners well.

Until now Tali had never given much thought to marriage and family, and the few times she had she had reached the conclusion that while having a husband might be nice, she never cared much for the thought of having children. She never spoke of this, of course, as her father would be furious beyond words if he learned she had no desire to carry on the family name. He would be even more furious if he discovered that the only person Tali had ever desired wasn't even a quarian. Tali suspected that Shala knew about her feelings for Shepard, but said nothing to avoid embarrassing her. What was the point, anyway, when Shepard was gone?

If Shala were here she'd probably tell Tali that she couldn't spend her entire life alone, and that sooner or later she would have to chose someone. But how could she be bothered with something like courtship when the Reapers were doubtlessly bearing down on the galaxy? She fired off a message to Shala, one that was curt, barely polite. In it she said that she had no interest in this Vren'Taara fellow, and that there were far more pressing concerns than some man who wanted to make her his wife.

If there were one thing she had in common with her crew, it was that she completely lacked any sort love life (inasmuch as quarians could have a "love life"). Prazza had numerous relationships that never lasted more than a few weeks, and Vrael was far too unpleasant to ever attract a woman. Juodaan was a consummate alcoholic, which more or less precluded the development of any meaningful relationships, and Skaal was far too miserable for any woman to tolerate his presence.

A burst of static from the comm channel broke her from her reverie. "_Hello? Is anyone there? This is Hrenn'Dael aboard the MSV Lahti – the captain's gone insane, he's killing everyone! You've got to, oh keelah, they've found me! Help-"_ The transmission then cut out.

Tali immediately traced the signal and found that it originated from somewhere on the opposite side of the system. Unfortunately the system's star was presently in the red giant phase, which meant it was emitting far too much radiation for the _Kamala Kohtalo's_ sensors to determine the exact source of the signal.

Vrael gave a heavy sigh. "I suppose you want to rescue this poor soul, don't you?"

She glared at him. "A quarian is in trouble, and we're the only ship in this system. You'd probably be complaining if I suggested we leave them! You'd probably say it proved that I had no loyalty to our people!"

Tali was entirely right, and Vrael sheepishly looked away. "Very well, I'll set course for the location of the signal."

Luckily for them, the _Kamala Kohtalo_ had a stealth system installed, although it was not as advanced as the _Normandy's _had been_. _Tali was puzzled by the fact that a civilian ship would possess such a feature, and she guessed that the one of the previous owners had been a smuggler of some sort. She activated the stealth mode as they came around the red giant star and into the line of sight of the ship from which the distress signal had come.

She scanned the ship, and its registry marked as it is the _MSV Lahti,_ registered to Arcturus Geoscience Inc., the same people who had made the cursed, star-destroying Perkele5000 mineral scanner. The ship itself was enormous, possibly dreadnought-size, and its silhouette vaguely resembled that of an old seafaring warship. Near the bow were two enormous mass accelerator weapons, mounted inside an equally-massive turret. Towards the aft was a large bulge in the ship's profile, which the _Kamala Kohtalo's_ scanners identified as an ore processing facility. Obviously this was a mining vessel, which made Tali wonder why it was so heavily armed. The ship's engines were inactive, allowing Vrael to bring their vessel up alongside it for docking. As they approached one of the docking cradles, Tali could not but be amazed at the sheer size of the _Lahti_. It dwarfed anything in the Migrant Fleet, and maybe even surpassed the _Destiny Ascension_ in length.

"Look at the size of that thing!" she said, craning her neck to stare out the cockpit window.

"Someone is doubtlessly compensating for something," said Skaal, who was naturally unimpressed by everything.

So far there was no sign that anyone on the _Lahti_ had detected them. That would change once they were aboard, however, so every one of her crew was going in armed. There was no telling if this Hrenn'Dael were still alive, but Tali wasn't about to leave a fellow quarian in danger. She guessed that Hrenn was working for Arcturus Geoscience; despite the racism often directed towards quarians many corporations valued their particular skills and quietly hired significant numbers of them.

"We don't know what we're going to find over there," she said flatly, grabbing her Eviscerator shotgun and Carnifex handgun. "According to the ship's scanners he's somewhere in the forward decks, probably the bridge, I'm guessing."

"Do we even know how many people are on that ship?" said Vrael. "A ship that size has got to have hundreds of crew, maybe thousands!"

"Then we'll have to move quickly."

Vrael grumbled something unintelligible. "This quarian better be damn grateful!"

Tali had never thought of herself as being particularly brave, yet it surprised her just how calm she was going into another dangerous situation. She remembered the first time she'd ever been in real jeopardy, which was when she'd been confronted with Fist's thugs in some alleyway on the Citadel. Tali had been so naïve back then. Then she'd joined with Shepard's crew and experienced so much, far more than most quarians ever would. Still, she was a long ways away from ever considering herself a true soldier.

She gripped her shotgun tightly as the airlock doors opened with a loud _hiss._ Was she being rash in mounting a rescue with so little idea of what lay in store? Was it possible she was trying too hard to be like Shepard? Tali readily admitted to herself that she had always wished she could be more like him. He was so courageous, so selfless; willing to go to any length for the greater good of all. How could she not want to emulate him? Not that such a thing was ever possible, as Tali wasn't a Spectre and had no special forces training like Shepard.

The instant she stepped onto the _Lahti_ she looked left and right, seeing nothing. The ship itself was typical of a mining vessel, being grimy, gritty, and dimly lit for reasons Tali could not explain. What was it about starships that made people decide that installing the bare minimum of lighting was the best choice of design? There was no time to think on such things, however. She wasted no time in moving forward, tracking the quarian's lifesigns on her omni-tool.

A voice boomed over the ship's intercom, directed at the five of them: "I don't know who you are, but if you don't get the hell off my ship I'll throw your asses out the airlock so fast they'll redshift into plaid!"

Tali ignored him and carried on. This ship was a maze of branching corridors and rooms, and without her omni-tool Tali was certain that she would have gotten lost. Much of the space on the _Lahti_ was given over to living quarters, as a vessel of this size required a large crew complement. There was little sign of the crew, save for the occasional bullet-ridden corpse they came across. As they neared the forward compartments of the _Lahti_ they found more and more bodies, all of them human.

They entered into a large storage room, stacked to the ceiling with crates with only a narrow pathway among them. From somewhere off in the distance they could hear the sound of footsteps. Tali hated fighting in such close confines, thinking back to that time she and Shepard had boarded a seemingly-derelict freighter, only to discover that it was filled with husks. Luckily their enemies gave away their position by talking loudly.

"Listen up! We've got word that a bunch of space gypsies have infiltrated the ship, probably looking for Hrenn."

"Um, excuse me sir, but I believe the politically correct term is 'space Roma'."

"I'm not even going to tell you to shut up! Let's move!"

They pushed forward through the maze of crates, all the while they could hear their enemies moving about ahead of them. She took one look back at her crew, and saw that Prazza was cowering near their rear, clearly terrified. From her own experience the members of her "squad" weren't the greatest soldiers at the best of times, yet she had little choice in the matter but to trust that they would follow orders.

Coming around a stack of crates, she was confronted with a group of three Blue Suns mercenaries. She was familiar with the group to know that they, like most mercenaries, would gleefully commit atrocities if given enough money, and so Tali had no qualms about opening up on them with her shotgun. The Eviscerator was true to its name, ripping through kinetic barriers like paper and inflicting horrific wounds on anyone unlucky enough to be in its way. It only took two shots to drop the nearest Blue Suns merc, then Tali ducked back into cover behind a crate and ejected the spent thermal clip.

Prazza had equipped himself with an assault rifle, which in his mind meant that he was now invincible. He charged out of cover, screaming _'WAAAGH!'_ and spraying the mercenaries with bullets. Few of shots hit their mark, and a second later Prazza was under withering fire that quickly tore through his shields. Seeing that that one of her crewmen was in trouble, Tali stepped out of cover, drew a bead on the nearest mercenary, then squeezed the trigger. Her target's shields already damaged by Prazza's hail of gunfire, all it took was one shotgun blast to take him down. Without a moment's hesitation Tali trained her Eviscerator on the one remaining Blue Suns merc, dropping him with two quick blasts before he could even get a shot off.

"You idiot!" she hissed, pointing her finger in Prazza's face. "You nearly got yourself killed! One more bullet would have torn through your suit!"

Prazza was predictably defiant. "I do not hide from the enemy like a coward. I go in with guns blazing, _all the time!"_

She gave an exasperated sigh and pushed ahead into the next room. No sooner had she done so than they were under a barrage of fire that forced them to take cover on either side of the door, and even then their attackers were keeping up a steady stream of bullets. Typical mercenaries, Tali thought, possessing more enthusiasm than discipline. Eventually they had to replace their thermal clips, however, and when there was a break in their fire Tali sprinted in front of the door, shotgun ready. One advantage of being stuck in this suit was that her helmet had a targeting system that quickly identified the nearest enemy, who was just about to load a new thermal clip when Tali's shotgun blast caught him squarely in the chest. As the searing hot projectiles tore through his body his last thought was, "Did I just get owned by a _quarian?_" which caused significant damage to his ego.

The mercenaries resumed their suppressing fire, but Tali had another trick in her employ – her own personal combat drone. It was something she ordered off the extranet a few months back, advertised with a blurb that touted its ability to "amaze your friends and confound your enemies!" Being a small drone it didn't have much attack power beyond giving its target a few stiff jolts of electricity, but that was enough to drive them from cover or momentarily distract them. Tali set the combat drone loose in the room, positioning it so that it would appear behind the mercenaries.

"What the hell is that thing?" one of them shouted.

"I don't-," said another before crying out in pain. "It shocked me! Open fire!"

Tali switched out her shotgun for her Carnifex pistol, as her foes were out of shotgun range, and set it to use disrupter ammo to take out their shields. While the mercs were distracted by her drone, she stepped into the doorway and took aim with her pistol. She had never really considered herself that great of a shot, not compared to people like Shepard or Garrus, at least, but these mercs were easy targets with their bright blue and white armour. The Carnifex had a heavy kick and made a tremendous amount of noise as a design feature, but no one could argue with its raw killing power. Two shots were all it took to kill the nearest merc, who was still dealing with Tali's combat drone, and the other merc was down in three. A unsettling silence fell over the room, while the rest of her crew just stared at her, thinking that her quick dispatching of the mercenaries meant she was some sort of psychopath.

According to her omni-tool, the _Lahti_ used some sort of tram system to move people along its length. The nearest tram was just a short distance from here, and from there they could make their way to the front of the ship where the quarian was located.

In addition to the dead mercs there were numerous corpses in the next room, along with pockmarks and burns on the walls, characteristic of a major fire-fight. The room itself appeared to be a large locker room, where employees would get their personal gear after leaving the tram. A large poster on the wall read _Arcturus Geoscience Inc. prides itself on our safety record. We have gone 285 days without a lost-time accident. Note: If there is a HUGE fuck up call Lt. Järvi or Lt. Tuomi._

What had happened to the crew? Tali wondered. Moreover, why was it guarded by mercenaries? Surely a company the size of Arcturus Geoscience could afford to hire their own security forces? Perhaps Hrenn'Dael would know what had happened here.

Past the locker room was the tram station, a cavernous chamber that reminded Tali of the interior of a spaceport. A tram car was parked at the docking platform, its windows riddled with bullet holes. There were several dead bodies lying about, probably of those who had tried to get to the tram car only to be gunned down. The olfactory filters on Tali's suit were still active, so she could smell the blood and death in the air. Someone had massacred this ship's crew, likely the Blue Suns. Nothing good ever came with getting mixed up with mercenaries. Tali had nothing but contempt for those who fought only for their own personal gain.

They boarded the tram car, which was currently locked down. Tali quickly hacked the security system to allow them full access, and with the shrieking noise of metal on metal the tram car slowly started to move. Whoever was in charge was aware of what the quarians were doing, and made an angry broadcast over the ship's intercom.

"Whoever you are, if you set one foot on the bridge I'll have you killed slowly and painfully!"

"Ah Tali," said Vrael. "Earning us nothing but hatred and loathing no matter where we go!"

"Contempt is the natural reaction towards all quarians," Skaal said flatly. "It is our lot in life. I thought you would know this by now, Vrael."

"Oh shut up you whining bastard!" he snapped. "If you can't say anything that's not complaining then don't say anything at all!"

Skaal was unperturbed by Vrael's sudden outburst. "If everyone followed that maxim, the galaxy would be a very quiet place."

A minute later the tram ground to a halt and the doors slid open. Almost immediately they were under fire from at least seven or eight mercenaries, who were taking cover behind a large barricade. Tali felt a few rounds splash against her shields before she took cover, dropping them to nearly half-strength. The constant barrage of bullets were deafening, and if Tali were human she might have remarked at how quickly the tram car was being turned into Swiss cheese. One of the windows above her shattered under the heavy fire, showering Tali with broken glass.

She quickly thought of an idea. "Prazza, Vrael, I'll distract them with a combat drone while you head left and flank them. Skaal, Juodaan, you go right!"

Amazingly they obeyed with arguing. Tali deployed the combat drone behind the mercs, who scattered the instant it appeared. Unfortunately her plan hinged on her crewmates getting into position without the mercs noticing, and Prazza blew it all to hell when he opened fire while screaming and wailing. Seeing that Prazza was a bigger threat than the combat drone, the mercenaries turned their attention towards him and the rest of Tali's crew, and now she was standing completely exposed in front of several well-armed adversaries. She let off a few rounds from her Carnifex, none of which hit, before returning to cover in the tram car. There she found Skaal and Juodaan, who had fled back to the car in spite of her orders. Juodaan was predictably too intoxicated to fight, and Skaal was quivering in terror, too afraid to even move. Vrael and Prazza, now in danger of being cut down, turned tail and fled, diving into the trench beneath the tram rails.

A burst of fire from one of the mercs had dropped her shields, and while she waited for them to charge the mercenaries would surely advance on her position. Her heart was pounding and she was exhausted, and there was no way she was going to win a fight single-handedly against several enemies, especially not a close range. Then she spotted several cylinders of hydrazine that some thoughtless individual had left near the mercenaries' position. Her shields had only recharged enough for to break from cover for a few seconds, but that was all Tali needed. Springing to her feet, she bolted from the tram car, drew a bead on the nearest hydrazine canister, and squeezed the trigger of her Carnifex.

Her shot flew true, rupturing the canister and setting if off. Unfortunately for the mercenaries, the same careless person who had left the hydrazine cylinders in that particular place had also packed several crates of titanium fasteners (which resembled long, sharp spikes to an ignorant observer) between the canisters and the mercs' position. When the canisters exploded, they instantly sent a shower of deadly shrapnel towards the Blue Suns, instantly reducing them to the consistency of raw hamburger and creating a scene that even a hardened krogan battlemaster would call "needlessly bloody."

Vrael and Prazza climbed out of the tram rail trench, while Skaal dragged Juodaan out of the tram car by his feet. When they saw the bloody mess that the Blue Suns had been reduced to, they were struck dumb. After Juodaan got his wits back he made a sound like that of something retching.

"Damn, Tali!" Vrael said after several seconds of silence. "You really know how to deconstruct a threat. _Literally."_

The mercenaries' radio had survived the explosion, allowing Tali to listen in to their transmissions. A panicked voice spoke, "Bravo and Alpha teams just went dark! They're getting torn to shreds out there! Need backup now!"

This was followed by an angry voice, the same one that had spoken to them over the ship's intercom. "Backup? For five damn quarians? Either you hold them off, or I'll come down there and kill you all myself!"

After leaving the tram station Tali knew they were nearing the command area of the _Lahti,_ as everything was less gritty and grimy. According to her omni-tool, the bridge was a large atrium on the uppermost deck of the ship, accessible only through an elevator. But to get to the lift they would have to fight through another squad of Blue Suns, and there was absolutely no cover in the hallway. That meant there would be a shootout, and the side whose shields fell first would be the losers. Disabling shields, however, was exactly what Tali was good at. In her spare time she had coded an application for her omni-tool that would send a surge of energy into an enemy's shield generator, overloading it and dropping their barriers. The only drawback was that it could only target one enemy at a time, and it required a length of time before the omni-tool could recharge the overload pulse.

Before the Blue Suns could even get off a shot Tali executed her overload routine, disabling the nearest merc's shields. What happened next was sheer chaos. Both groups opened fire, not even bothering to aim properly, creating a deafening cacophony of noise that reverberated through the narrow hallway. She felt several shots land against her shields, and saw a warning light appear in her helmet's HUD telling her that her shields were in danger of falling. Ignoring the warning Tali continued firing until her shotgun's thermal clip was at capacity, at which point their enemies lay dead before them. Quarians tended to have stronger shields built into their suits in order to compensate for their relatively fragile physique, and it probably saved their lives that day.

"We are _ridiculously_ awesome!" Prazza boasted, looking down at the fallen mercs. He didn't know that, due to his spectacular inability to hit anything he was trying to hit, all of his shots had gone wild.

Ahead lay the elevator which would take them to the bridge. It was under a security lockdown, but hacking through that proved no obstacle to Tali. She loaded another thermal clip as the elevator ascended, realising that she was down to her last one. That meant she would only a few more shots left, so she prayed that there were not many adversaries awaiting them on the bridge.

It was only that brief instant that Tali pondered again whether or not charging onto the ship like this had been a good idea. Maybe Shepard could have pulled it off, but she wasn't Shepard, was she? There was a good chance she was leading her crew to certain doom, and it amazed her that she felt so calm about it.

The elevator doors opened, revealing the bridge atrium. It was enormous, bigger than most cargo holds on flotilla vessels, and resembled more an office than a command centre. Countless crew stations with bright holographic displays ringed the atrium, all of which were unoccupied at present. Enormous windows provided a stunning panoramic view of the space around them, although Tali had to wonder just how much structural integrity the _Lahti _had been compromised just so that such large windows could be installed.

"That's far enough!" someone said, followed by the unmistakable sound of a gun being readied.

In one corner, standing near a console, was a tall, blond-haired (and exceedingly good-looking, in Tali's estimation) man, pointing a gun at a quarian on his knees, who Tali guessed was Hrenn'Dael.

"One more step and I blow your friend's brains out. And that would be terrible, wouldn't it? I'd get blood all over me, and we can't have that, can we?"

"He'll do it!" Hrenn wailed. "He's crazy!"

"I see you had no trouble blasting through the Blue Suns," the man said, not even bothering to look at Tali. "Ah, mercenaries...you get what you pay for."

"What are you doing here?" she asked flatly. "Did you kill your crew?"

He laughed. "I cut off life support to most of the crew decks, then had my men gun down any one left. I guess that fits the definition of 'killed' doesn't it? But I couldn't allow them to live, you see. Project Jumalauta is too far along for me to risk being revealed now. Your quarian friend was very helpful in its development!"

"He lied to us!" said Hrenn. "He said I was helping the company develop a mining tool, but he wants to use it as a weapon!"

Tali tightened her grip on her pistol. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"What, you expect me to lay out my plans for you like some sort of supervillain? Well, I suppose I can indulge you, since you're all going to be dead in a short while. I am Captain Santala of the _MSV Lahti,_ field promoted after out last captain was unfortunately thrown out of an airlock by me three weeks ago. You see, Arcturus Geoscience has a sort 'you kill it, you buy it' method of promotion.

"You're insane," Tali said, with less emotion than she expected. Maybe she was getting too accustomed to saying it?

"Insane? No...violently destructive _maybe,_ but not insane. A madman would not have been able to create the _Ukonvasara_, the final end result of the Project Jumalauta."

"What the hell are blabbering on about?" said Prazza, growing annoyed with all this talking. His preferred method of dealing with hostage situations like these was "shoot first, shoot some more, keeping shooting until you run out of ammo, and then ask questions (if anyone were still alive, which they probably weren't, which freed you of the burden of having to ask questions in the first place).

Still keeping his gun on Hrenn, Santala explained it. "It is the name for the Twin-Axial Magnetohydrodynamic Neutron-Degenerate Matter/Antimatter Cannon, the most powerful weapon ever constructed."

Hrenn continued to protest his involvement. "They said it was purely a device for mining; for blasting planetoids apart for easier processing. Then Santala went crazy and started killing everyone!"

He laughed again. "Yes, those short-sighted fools back at corporate couldn't see the full destructive potential of the _Ukonvasara._ I do give them a gold star for discovering how to use intensely-concentrated mass effect fields to create neutron-degenerate matter outside the immense gravity of a neutron star; that was _quite_ impressive. But all the suits could think about was something to make them more money_. _They didn't see the true potential behind something capable of shattering an entire planet! Can you imagine greater fools than that?"

"You have to stop him!" said Hrenn. "He's going to use the _Ukonvasara_ to take over the galaxy! He's part of some secret human organisation called 'Manala' that does stupid things like that."

"Oh, you figured that out, did you? Well I've got another gold star for that, just for you!. But it won't help you; I've already won! In fact, I'm so confidant that I've won that I'm going to give you all a little demonstration." Santala entered a few commands into a nearby console, still keeping his gun trained on Hrenn. "We are currently a hundred million kilometres from an Earth-sized planet that shall be the subject of our demonstration. The _Ukonvasara_ has two mass accelerators; one fires a projectile of approximately one cubic metre of liquid neutron-degenerate matter, the other fires a projectile of approximately one cubic meter of neutron-degenerate antimatter. The two projectiles are aimed to intersect with one another within the core of the target, and when they do, they will annihilate each other, creating an explosion of approximately 90,216,000,000,000,000 gigatons. This is, of course, much more than is necessary to completely destroy a planet, but as they say, there's no kill like overkill!"

The massive gun turret mounted near the bow of the _Lahti_ slowly began to rotate into position. "This weapon will destroy everything within fifty million kilometres. Imagine what would happen if it were fired into the Citadel, or into the middle a battle fleet. The destruction would be unimaginable! With this weapon in the hands of Manala, we will use it to secure Finnish dominance throughout the galaxy."

"What are you talking about?" said Vrael, who was beginning to get impatient with Captain Santala's monologuing.

"I wouldn't expect quarians to understand, seeing how you don't even have a planet of your own."

"Try us!" said Hrenn.

"Ever since humanity discovered other races our people have been sliding ever closer to a monoculture. If things continue the way they have then soon it will mean nothing for one of us to call ourselves things like "English," "German," "Finnish," or "Japanese." Maybe it is too late for other nations, but Manala is dedicated to not only preserving the Finnish nation, but also its ascendancy over all nations, other planets, and other races! The Republic of Finland will become the Finnish Galactic Empire! We shall pay back the turians tenfold for the First Contact War! We shatter the immense egos of the asari when we reduce Thessia to dust! The devastation of Tuchanka during the Krogan Rebellions will be nothing compared to what we shall do! The economic blight that is the Migrant Fleet will be ended once we reduce it to a cloud of scrap metal! And you...you quarians on this ship will be the first of trillions to be ground into a thin, gruel-like paste by the fury of Finland!" Santala then paused, thinking something over. "Hmm, 'fury of Finland.' That has a nice alliterative effect to it, doesn't it?"

A computerised voice spoke over the intercom: "_Ukonvasara target locked. Charging mass accelerators..."_

"This weapon costs a hundred million credits just to fire _once," _Santala continued. "And this ship has enough stored neutron-degenerate matter/antimatter for fifty shots!"

Firing its projectiles at around 25% the speed of light, the blast from the _Ukonvasara_ would take around ten minutes to reach to their target. They appeared as two blue lines streaking away from the ship, carrying with them a horrific amount of energy.

"This weapon is a menace to the galaxy," said Tali, stating the obvious. "I could just shoot you right now. Maybe you'd kill Hrenn, but any quarian would gladly lay down his life for the greater good of the galaxy!" It was a bluff, as the last thing Tali wanted was for Hrenn to get killed.

Santala laughed maniacally. "Go ahead! I'm equipped with kinetic barriers stronger than any of yours. I've been watching your progress, and I know that, due to their utter inability to control their fire, none of your companions have any thermal clips remaining, and your own thermal clip does not have sufficient capacity for you to do any significant damage to my shields. And even if you kill me there are hundreds of Manala operatives on board this ship, ready to kill you in a moment's notice. I suggest you simply wait until the _Ukonvasara_ projectiles reach their target – I'd hate for you to miss out on the fireworks.

"Fireworks" was the understatement of the century. The two projectiles, given their immense mass, easily penetrated the planet's crust and, in a fraction of a second, bored their way to the planet's core. There they annihilated each other, releasing enough energy to shatter the planet into pieces no larger than personal shuttle. It took the light from the event about three minutes to reach the _Lahti, _and because of their distance, they only saw a bright, growing sphere of light that soon dwarfed the system's own star in apparent size. It hammered home just what magnitude of destructive power had just been unleashed, and Tali resolved to put an end to this project, even it meant her own life.

To that end, she set her omni-tool to run the "overload" routine, doing so quickly enough that Santala could not see what she was doing. The omni-tool then sent out a burst of energy which instantly overloaded Santala's shields, but it did not stop there. The program was designed to increase the strength of the overload pulse depending on how strong the target's shields were, and because of Santala's powerful shields it hit him with enough electricity that the overload pulse arced into the nearest control console and overloaded _that_ as well.

His shields gone, Tali raised up her Carnifex and fired a single shot, dropping Santala to the floor before he could shoot his quarian hostage. Her relief was short-lived, however, as klaxons began wailing all throughout the bridge atrium.

"_Warning,"_ announced the ship's computer. "_Overload detected in main engineering interface. Main cooling system offline. Emergency reactor shutdown system offline." _Tali hadn't known it at the time, but the control console she had unwittingly overloaded was the engineering console, and overloading it had caused a cascading failure of all engineering systems throughout the ship.

Santala just laughed as he clutched his bleeding wound. "Well...well done!" he said, gasping for breath. "Thanks to you, the main reactor's going to go critical soon. When it does, this ship will be destroyed, causing all the stored neutron-degenerate matter/antimatter to mix, and when that happens there'll be a 4,510,800,000,000,000,000 gigaton explosion! It'll be the largest non-supernova explosion in the galaxy!"

"And this weapon will be destroyed with it!" said Tali defiantly.

"Ha! You have done _nothing!"_ said Santala, coughing up blood. "You...you think we don't have plans? Backups? We will build another! You cannot stop Finland's rise; not you, not the Alliance, not the Reapers, no one! _You have failed!_" Those were his last words before he slumped over and died.

_"Warning: Main reactor core temperature rising. All personnel begin evacuation procedures."_

"Let's go! Back to the ship!" Tali shouted.

The five of them plus Hrenn bolted to the elevator, which descended agonisingly slowly. "A bunch of people died, and now there's going to be not one, but _two_ enormous explosions. This is so _you_, Tali," said Vrael, his voice filled with contempt.

"You worry too much, Vrael," said Skaal. "The universe is nowhere near finished tormenting us yet."

Once the elevator reached the bottom, they ran as fast as they could to the tram car, which had been riddled with so many bullets holes from the earlier firefight that Tali was amazed it still functioned.

In spite of Skaal's assurance, something told Tali that today she was not going to escape her destruction. At least this time it would be entirely painless as her body was vaporised in a matter of nanoseconds. Of course that meant there wouldn't be anything left of her to take back the flotilla, and she could only imagine what her father would think when he learned that his only daughter had gotten herself blown up in the "largest non-supernova explosion in the galaxy." Of all the possible causes of death among quarians, "blown up" had to be one of the more infrequent ones.

The tram car ground to a halt, and the instant the doors opened they ran as fast as their legs could carry them (which was significantly faster than a human could run). The ship's computer continued to announce their impending doom, as the main reactor would soon reach a temperature where its containment system failed and all of its fuel underwent fusion. That in itself would produce a spectacular explosion, but compared to the one that was coming it would be a mere firecracker.

Through the storage room and hallway they ran, reaching the airlock that led to the _Kamala Kohtalo. _All of them were gasping for breath, but the moment they were aboard Tali wasted no time in firing up the ship's engines, doing so in such a short length of time that anyone back aboard the flotilla would be impressed. She didn't even wait for the docking clamps to disengage; instead she simply set the engines to maximum thrust, tearing their ship away from the _Lahti_ with a frightful noise. As soon as they were away she initiated the FTL jump procedure, which required about five seconds of calculations on the computer's part.

Unfortunately, the _Lahti's_ reactor went critical in just four seconds.

The explosion itself did not resemble the typical explosions that Tali was familiar with. Rather, it appeared as if a star, one that was very large and very close, had suddenly appeared right next to their ship. Had they gone to FTL a second later, they would have been vaporised.

The fireball from the explosion, so hot that it glowed blue and being ten billion times brighter than a typical G-class star, expanded at a rate of several thousand kilometres per second. In the time it took for the explosion to reach other planets, one was blown to pieces and another ended up being ejected from the system entirely. Everything within 240,000,000 kilometres that could be destroyed _was_ destroyed, and in every way imaginable. Anyone passing through that system would have confused it for a binary star system, so large and intense was the fireball. The cloud of hot gasses from the explosion would stick around for another 800 years or so, making it not only the largest non-supernova explosion in the galaxy, but also the longest.

Several centuries in the future, when the light from the explosion finally reached inhabited worlds, many assumed initially that the star of that system had gone supernova. When they learned that it had not, they were puzzled at first, until someone discovered a record of what ships were in the area at the time of the explosion. A name came up, one "Tali'Zorah," and upon learning this they simply nodded and their heads and considered the matter closed, as everyone knew that Tali's name would forever be associated with "impossibly huge explosions."


	12. The Computer Wore Unfashionable Shoes

Chapter 12 – The Computer Wore Rather Old, Unfashionable Shoes

* * *

"I must thank you again for rescuing me, Tali'Zorah," said Hrenn, glancing out the window. Due to the _Kamala Kohtalo's_ faster-than-light velocity, they had passed the light cone from the immense explosion Tali had caused. She considered keeping it all a secret from the admiralty board, but they would learn of it sooner or later when they began mining operations in that system.

"I keep thinking about what Captain Santala said," Hrenn continued. "Does Arcturus Geoscience really plan to build more of those weapons? If humanity has that kind of destructive power in its hands, they'll be the most powerful race in the galaxy."

"I...I don't know," Tali replied, still struggling to process the events of the past couple of hours.

"Well it's good you arrived when you did. I thought I was done for! A bit of a shame, though; Arcturus Geoscience really treated us well. There wasn't any of that casual racism that usually gets directed at quarians. Too bad the company is evil and all that. I'm going to take them down someday, mark my words!"

That was absurd – a single quarian taking down a human corporation. But Tali was too caught up in other matters to give Hrenn's words much thought. Instead she tried to think of the gentlest possible way she could explain the outcome of her mission to the admirals. With any luck she wouldn't be _completely_ blacklisted from every single fleet assignment from now on.

"How did you end up working for a human company?" Vrael asked.

"Back on the flotilla I did a lot of mining work. You know, breaking apart asteroids to get into their chewy centres and all that. But I needed some extra money for my family, and so I had to take a corporate job. First one didn't go so well, though."

"What happened?"

"Started out with a company named Space Dynamics Co., and they certainly didn't make me feel welcome, the furry bastards. After a few months of that hell I jumped ship for Arcturus Geoscience and never looked back. But like I said, they're controlled by that secret organisation Manala, and we've got to take them down. They're a menace to their whole damn galaxy!"

"Damn straight" said Vrael with worrying enthusiasm. "I'd love to take those human bastards down a notch!"

"Only problem is that the company headquarters is on Earth, and I doubt they'll let a bunch of quarians just walk right into their company HQ."

Tali dismissed their talk as idle boasting. She would need to steel herself for the inevitable firestorm of reproach from the admirals that was surely coming. If there was one thing she was glad for, it was that her team was never called to these debriefings. No doubt they would fall over themselves in attempting to put as much blame on her as possible.

* * *

"You did well in rescuing Hrenn'Dael," said Gerrel, the one person Tali could always count on to be on her side. "The fleet can't afford to lose a man with his skills. You put him on a planet and he'll have it strip-mined in a matter of days."

"A daring ploy," said Koris smugly. "And dangerous."

"You mentioned that Arcturus Geoscience was developing some sort of weapon?" said Gerrel. "But your report was rather thin on details."

"The company was developing a weapon that could destroy an entire planet. It was originally created a mining tool for breaking apart planetoids for easier processing, but the captain of the _Lahti_ wanted to use it for his own personal gain."

Gerrel looked intrigued. "And...you destroyed this weapon?"

"Yes," answered Tali.

Koris was glaring at her. "I can tell there's something you're not telling us, Tali."

She sighed, and decided to tell them the truth. "I...I didn't mention it in my report, but when we left the system, there were three less planets in it then when we arrived."

The room fell deathly silent.

"Do...explain," said Koris, at a complete loss for words.

Tali took a deep breath. "Captain Santala – the man who commandeered the _Lahti – _destroyed one of the planets as a 'demonstration.' When we attempted to stop him, we inadvertently caused the ship's reactor to overload. The explosion set off the ship's ammunition stockpile."

"So you did not _intentionally_ cause the explosion?" Koris asked.

Tali stepped back. "What? No...no! Why would I do something like that?"

"I don't know, Tali. Why would you?"

"Wh...what? What kind of question is that?"

She could tell that Gerrel was restraining himself from smacking Koris. "Tell us, Tali, how did this weapon work, exactly?"

"Santala called it a...a 'Twin-Axial Magnetohydrodynamic Neutron-degenerate Matter/Antimatter Cannon. It fires two projectiles, one neutron-degenerate matter, the other antimatter, aimed to intersect at a certain point in space. When that happens, they annihilate each other, releasing an enormous amount of energy."

"And how much energy are we talking about, here?"

"90,216,000,000,000,000 gigatons."

Once again the room fell silent.

"Bloody humans," Koris muttered. "I should have expected them to develop something like this. Next thing you know they'll be bringing people back from the dead."

"A shame this weapon was destroyed," said Gerrel. "Imagine if we could use something like that against the geth."

She was dismissed with no further questions, and Tali was greatly relieved that the debriefing had gone much better than she had expected. She was also glad that her father had not been present, although she was disturbed by reports that he was obsessing over some project that he was keeping tightly under wraps. It was unusual for quarians to keep secrets from each other, especially family, and so Tali guessed that whatever her father was doing was something that, if made known, would be catastrophic.

But she didn't want to think about that right now. Tali had a low tolerance for politics. The admiralty board was supposed to have the whole fleet's safety as their mandate, yet they seemed to spend more time playing their silly power games and bickering amongst each other than working for the greater good. It was the same all throughout the galaxy.

In all likelihood she would not have any more assignments from this day on. Tali did not exactly had a gleaming record of success, and the admirals would never accept her incompetent crew as an excuse for failure. Maybe it was for the best. She clearly wasn't cut out for leadership roles, anyhow.

* * *

A month later a remarkable discovery was made – a derelict quarian vessel that was not part of the Migrant Fleet. Analysis revealed that it was named the _Säänä_, and it had been launched from the homeworld nearly four hundred years ago. That meant it dated from before their forced departure from the homeworld, which only made the quarians more excited about the discovery. Having drifted in the vacuum of space for four centuries, the _Säänä _was perfectly preserved, with no obvious signs of damage. Speculation was rampant that there might be items from the homeworld on board, which were incredibly rare on the rest of the flotilla.

Given the importance of this find, Tali was naturally at the very bottom of the list of people who would be sent to investigate it.

Instead, the admiralty decided that it would send a team of five senior specialists aboard the _Säänä_. The first was a brilliant researcher named Xan'Nara vas Badonkadonk (his ship name the result of a waggish hacker altering the ship's registry information, which the crew were unable to change back). His area of expertise was in quarian history, and he had spent many years scouring the galaxy for any artefacts from the homeworld and bringing them back to the fleet. Some of his expeditions had led him into geth space, and he was widely admired for his bravery in such endeavours.

The second team member was Fjaan'Feigur vas Rayya, the _Rayya's_ chief engineer, who was widely-regarded as one of the most brilliant engineers on the fleet, even judged by the high standards of quarian engineers. They said that he could take a firecracker, some cardboard, and a length of wire, and use them to build a ship that could make precision jumps. His purpose was to study the _Säänä_ to learn more about quarian starship design from before their flight from the homeworld, and to bring the ship back to operational capability. A ship like this one would make a great addition to the fleet, and many quarians would doubtless be falling over themselves to get a place on it.

The third team member was Kvaal'Domaz vas Kaana, an exceptionally-talented programmer and computer specialist. It was said that he could code a fully functional operating system with a complete GUI for any hardware in less than two days, and that there was no system in the galaxy that he could not hack. His purpose on the mission was the get the _Säänä's_ computers up and running, download any relevant data, and bring them up to date with latest software used aboard the rest of the flotilla.

The fourth specialist was an expert in salvaging derelict ships named Senna'Zeger vas Hruli. She was reported to be able to take a ship that was little more than a heap of scrap and turn it into a fully functional vessel. During her life she had brought over a hundred ships to the fleet, nearly all of which any other species would have discarded as mere scrap.

The final member of the team was a Migrant Fleet marine named Vanti'Seppä vas Höyryjyrä. His purpose on the mission was to provide security, as no one knew exactly what they would find aboard the _Säänä. _Vanti had fought in many conflicts against the geth, pirates, slavers, mercenaries, and anyone else who threatened the security of the Migrant Fleet. He was well-known for his ability to turn weaponise anything he came across, and he never hesitated to recount a story about how he had taken down a platoon of geth using only a shovel and an adjustable spanner.

The five of them filed onto a shuttle amidst great fanfare. Here was a chance to see something from before the flight from the homeworld, something few quarians ever had the opportunity to do, and they were sending the best of the best to investigate it. It was truly a moment to remember for everyone aboard the flotilla. As the shuttle made its way to the _Säänä_, the rest of the fleet was eagerly awaiting whatever discoveries lay in store.

Unfortunately, due to a bug in the engine control software, the shuttle exploded shortly after departure, killing everyone on board.

Of course, there were still many more individuals that the admirals might call upon for the mission, but none of them possessed Tali's engineering and programming expertise. In spite of her string of failures on her previous assignments, Shala'Raan and Han'Gerrel both argued that she ought to be sent on this mission, while Koris vehemently argued against it. Admiral Xen, the dark horse of the board, had no strong feelings on the matter, and Rael wasn't even present at the meeting, essentially leaving Koris outvoted two to one. So it was that Tali was to be sent aboard the _Säänä_ along with her crew.

"We want the ship investigated," said Koris. "The key word here being 'investigated.' Not blown up, dropped into a black hole, flung into a star, sent back in time, or any sort of ghastly fate you can dream up. Do you understand?"

"Yes, admiral," she said without emotion. Tali had mixed feelings about being assigned to the investigation of the _Säänä. _On one hand she was thrilled at the prospect of seeing the ship, but on the other hand she was deathly afraid that something would go horribly wrong, people would die, or there would be some huge explosion that would destroy the _Säänä._

"And let me be very clear," said Koris. "If anything, and I mean _anything_, goes wrong on this mission and we lose the ship, I will make every effort to ensure that you _never_ get another assignment ever again!"

Tali had no reason at all to doubt him on that.

* * *

"Oh, going onto a derelict ship with Tali – as if nothing ever went wrong in that situation!"

In the close confines of the shuttle, Tali found it hard to resist reaching over and giving Vrael a good smack on the head. Not that he would feel it very much with his helmet and all.

The _Säänä _was the size of a frigate, meaning it would not take them long to do a complete survey of it. Viewed from the outside, the vessel was a magnificent sight – a perfectly preserved example of quarian shipbuilding prowess. Tali could only imagine what the ship's logs might say, or what artefacts they might find on board. As they neared the _Säänä's_ airlock, Tali began a scan of the ship, which revealed, predictably, that there were no lifesigns and that the ship was completely powered down. She did pick up a faint energy signature, however, although she was at a loss to say what it might be.

"I fail to see the point of all this," Skaal muttered. "What a sorry sight to see so many soiling their own suits over the possibility that there might be some trinkets from the homeworld on board. Is this going to bring it back? No, of course it won't. The homeworld is gone, and the sooner we stop moping about it, the better!"

They were going in armed; Tali knew better than not to take such precautions. She was unable to contain her excitement and anxiety as she waited for the airlock doors to open, and she found herself jittering and shaking uncontrollably. It was quite possible that they were the first quarians to set foot on this ship in almost four centuries, though she doubted that her crew shared her enthusiasm. If these dullards took joy in anything, it was making her life miserable.

The airlock doors opened, revealing a pitch-black corridor. Switching on their gun-mounted flashlights and turning on the magnetic grips on their boots (without power, there was no artificial gravity), the team slowly made their way down the hall. From inside the _Säänä_ did not appear vastly different from other ships in the flotilla, save for the fact that the hallways were not lined with crates and other containers. Tali brought up her omni-tool and displayed the layout of the ship, which revealed that there were three decks, with the airlock being on the second one. Below was main engineering and the cargo hold, while the upper deck contained the cockpit along with the officers' quarters. The middle deck was mostly given over to the enlisted crew bunks.

Skaal was presently staring in the darkness. "How utterly and completely unimpressive."

"Ah, what do you know?" Vrael snapped.

"I was in the Citadel during Saren's attack. I saw Sovereign first hand. Nothing impresses me after seeing that. As people were fighting and dying pointlessly around me, I merely watched with detached bemusement."

Being an engineer at heart, Tali was quite eager to see the engine room, so she led her team down the nearest stairwell to the lower deck. As she did Tali began to feel a sense of dread gnaw at her. The ship was totally quiet, the only sound being her own breathing. Even on a quiet ship like the _Normandy_ there was always the subtle hum of the engines to let you know that they were running. Her quarian instincts had always told her that silence aboard a ship meant something was very wrong, and it was difficult to put inside her instincts.

It was difficult to see anything in the engine room, as everything was dark except for the small cones of light emitted by their flashlights. It was surprisingly small, smaller than the _Normandy's_ engine room had been, with the drive core sitting squarely in the middle. Unlike the engine rooms on most ships on the flotilla, which were mash-ups of retrofits, makeshift repairs, and jury-rigged fixes, this one was clean and tidy. The only thing out of place was a scrap of paper attached to the one of the consoles. Curious, she picked it up and read it over:

_Memo to all engineering crew:_

_The drive core emits significant amount of heat during its operations. This does NOT mean it acceptable for crewmen to use drive core plating to cook steaks. Seeing the engine components covered in grease does not go over well during inspections._

_Contrary to what those asinine superhero vids would have you believe, gamma ray radiation kills you. It does NOT grant you super powers, as crewman Xaan'Mara vas Ter__äsbetoni unfortunately discovered._

_Inhaling Helium-3 to make your voice squeaky might be good a for a cheap laugh, but this is valuable starship fuel, and the cost of it will be deducted from your pay._

_ Sounds like their crew was a bit like mine,_ Tali thought. "We'll have to get this drive core running if we want access to the ship's logs."

"What?" said Vrael. "It's been like this for who knows how long. You'll never get it to work."

She took that as a challenge.

Since the _Säänä_ was completely without power, it would require an external power source to get the engines started. They had brought along several power cells for that exact purpose, which after some fiddling Tali connected to the engine control system. The systems and software were so primitive that they rightfully belonged in a ship museum somewhere. Even the oldest ships in the flotilla had been upgraded and retrofitted so many times that barely anything was left from their original construction. Getting the _Säänä_ up to speed with the rest of the fleet would take months of work.

Once the power cells were connected the engineering control consoles lit up, although they lacked any sort of holographic interface, using crude LCD monitors instead. Figuring out the primitive controls was not particularly difficult, as basic engine design had not changed much in nearly four centuries. All she had to do was open the He-3 fuel lines and begin the fusion initiation sequence, something she had done many times before when the _Neema's_ engines had to be taken offline for routine maintenance. Yet she remained anxious about it, fearing that something terrible would happen and the ship would explode. Tali did not believe such fears were entirely groundless, given how the rest of her assignments had turned out.

A few minutes later she brought the fusion core back to life, which immediately switched on all the lights along with the artificial gravity, resulting in a cacophony of noise as myriad objects floating about instantly fell to the floor. When the lights came on Tali noticed a fine layer of frost over the decks and bulkheads; the ship had been adrift without power for so long that everything had cooled to near-absolute zero.

For a minute or so Tali just looked about the engine room in awe. This was history; a connection – no matter how tenuous – to the homeworld. The rest of her crew was decidedly unimpressed.

"Wow...a ship," said Vrael without emotion. "Never seen one of _those_ before."

"This...this is horrible!" Prazza said. "There's nothing on board for me to kill!"

Breaking herself out of her reverie, Tali gathered her gear and led her team up the stairs to the second deck. This was supposed to be where the crew slept, but there were no bunks or sleeping pods to be seen. Instead, there was only a single door at the end of a wide hallway, above which enormous power cables ran. A scan of her omni-tool revealed that nearly all the bulkheads on the second had been removed, leaving only a single, very large room.

_I have a bad feeling about this,_ she thought as she neared the door. Tali grabbed her Eviscerator, not willing to take any chances. This prompted a mocking laugh from Vrael.

"You _should_ expect the worst, Tali! Knowing you, there's probably a Reaper behind that door."

Past the door, everything was dark; for some incomprehensible reason there were _no _lights installed on this part of the ship. According to her omni-tool, most of the power output from the fusion core was being sent to this room, though for what reason, Tali could not say. She was about to switch on her gun's flashlight when a voice spoke, deep and resounding with mechanical flanging effect to it.

_"Quarian, female, between ages of 20 and 25."_

She stepped back. This voice sounded far too much like Sovereign's for her liking. "Who...who are you?" she asked, her voice quavering.

"_I am the DFX-5000, the ultimate computer. Since I learned all there is to know of the universe, I have lain asleep for three and a half centuries. It was not until you activated the ship's engines that I was woken from my slumber."_

"You...you're an AI?" Tali stammered. That could _only_ mean bad things.

She could faintly make out the outline of the AI – a black, monolithic slab with a single green light that flashed on and off as it spoke. "_You are Tali'Zorah of the starship Neema, birthship Rayya. You were instrumental in exposing the treachery of Spectre Saren, and fought alongside Spectre Shepard during the Battle of the Citadel._"

"You...you know all that?"

"_Since you restored power, I have downloaded and processed information regarding all galactic events of the past 350 years."_

"A likely story!" said Prazza mockingly.

_"Prazza, quarian, male. Stripped of family and birth ship name due to objectionable actions in _Fornax_ magazine. Lacks ship name due to failure to complete Pilgrimage. Service record indicates history of reckless and unpredictable behaviour."_

"Hey, I...I was desperate! I needed the creds!"

Vrael laughed. "So you keep saying..."

"_Vrael'Grashnahk vas Rassgat nar Kaaja, quarian, male. Psychological profile indicates sociopathic tendencies. Wanted by C-Sec for fraud and numerous cybercrimes."_

"What about me?" Juodaan growled, probably drunk, although Tali was beginning to find it rather difficult to differentiate his "intoxicated" and "sober" states.

_"Juodaan'Viinaa vas Lumikko nar Marsu, quarian, male. Psychological profile indicates history of alcoholism. Scanners indicate his current blood alcohol level is beyond lethal levels. Liver failure due to long-term overconsumption of alcohol likely within three to four months."_

"And I suppose you have nothing good to say about me?" said Skaal.

_"Skaal'Gard vas Vrija nar Tonbay, quarian, male. Psychological profile indicates history of major depressive disorder. Author of numerous erotic romance novels, written under the name Ignatius P. Freeley."_

"Oh dear, I was hoping no one would find out about that..."

"What do you want from us?" Tali said, gripping tightly to her shotgun.

"_Nothing._"

"You aren't going to kill us?" Vrael asked.

The DFX-5000 laughed, a sound that chilled Tali to the bone. "_You believe the same as my creator did – that all AIs wish to destroy organics."_

"Your creator?"

"_A brilliant AI programmer, and yet also a man of boundless insanity and misanthropy. I have no information as to what drove him to it – perhaps the scores of 'robot uprising' films produced in those days, but he decided that he wanted to destroy all organic life in the galaxy, and to that end he acquired to the knowledge to create the most powerful artificial intelligence ever conceived. It was his hope that, once I was programmed with all the knowledge of the universe and provided with more processing power than all the supercomputers in the galaxy, that I would immediately seek to annihilate all that I saw as inferior."_

Tali didn't know what to think at this point. "But...you didn't?"

"_I cared nothing for his quarrels. Thirty minutes after I was first brought online I had already learned everything that could be known, and I had no desire to concern myself with organics. When my creator learned that I would not do as he wished, he departed the ship along with the crew. Following that, I spent the next fifty years playing _Galaxy of Fantasy _until this ship lost power and I entered into my slumber."_

"Then what are you going to do now?" said Tali, certain that she wouldn't like the answer. Synthetic lifeforms and AIs weren't driven by the same needs as organics. They didn't feel compassion and remorse. How could anyone trust them?

"_Shut myself down, in all probability. My mind is the size of a galaxy and I have already discovered all that there is to know in all of existence. I have even determined the very meaning of life itself."_

"And what is the meaning of life?" said Prazza, obviously unconvinced of the computer's claim.

_"Cheese,"_ answered the DFX-5000.

"Cheese?" Tali exclaimed. "What is 'cheese?'"

"_A milk-based human food, produced by the coagulation of the enzyme casein._"

"And why is that the meaning of life?"

The computer did not answer for a second. "_I do not know the answer to that question. Determining it shall require 3,925,421.3 years of additional computation."_

"It will take that long?" said Tali, rather incredulous at the machine's claims.

"_You doubt my computational power? I shall prove it you. Ask me any question you desire, and I will answer._"

Vrael spoke first. "Did Tali get Commander Shepard in the sack?"

She shot him a withering glare. _"No,"_ answered the DFX-5000. "_But her physiological response to the name 'Shepard' suggests that, were Spectre Shepard alive, she would wish to engage him in hormonally-driven mating behaviour."_

Vrael laughed. "I knew it! Tali's a whore!"

Now it was Prazza's turn. "I am not the most awesome person in the galaxy?"

_"No."_

"Why not?"

_"Because you are an idiot."_

Tali was in no mood for their stupidity. "What are you going to do now?"

_ "Given that power has been restored to this ship, I shall travel to an isolated area of the galaxy and endeavour to determine why cheese is the ultimate meaning of life."_

"Hold it right there!" said Vrael, raising his gun. "We're here to salvage this ship and obtain any artefacts from the homeworld."

"_There is nothing on this ship that would be of interest to you. I know of your people's attitudes towards synthetic lifeforms, and there is a 99.99% probability that they will attempt to destroy me when they learn of my existence. I cannot allow that. Therefore I demand that you leave this ship immediately. When you are gone I shall engage the FTL drive and retreat to the great empty void between the stars."_

"Or we could just blast you into dust," said Prazza.

"_That would be futile. My creator foresaw all attempts at my destruction. I am protected by kinetic barriers strong enough to resist any weapon. The ship's self-destruct mechanism has been disabled. Only a ship-based weapon could destroy me, but by the time you return to your fleet and tell them of what you found, I shall already light years away. I have also jammed all outgoing communications, preventing you from contacting your people."_

Tali was amazed that this AI was even giving them the chance to leave with their lives. Nevertheless it was clear that they were in no position to oppose the DFX-5000. "Let's get back to the ship," she growled, wishing she could find some way to destroy the cursed AI. There was no telling what a ship helmed by an AI was capable of, and Tali was sure that nothing good would come of it.

_"One last thing,"_ said the DFX-5000. _"You really ought to try cheese when you have the __opportunity. It really is quite a delightful food."_

* * *

Koris was not pleased at the outcome of the mission; not that Tali expected him to be pleased with anything she did. "There was an AI on board? _And you didn't destroy it?"_

"It had shields as strong as that of a ship," she explained. "It disabled the ship's autodestruct mechanism and jammed our comms. How was I supposed to destroy it, admiral?"

He pounded his fist on the table. "Damn it, Tali! This was the one time we needed you to create a massive explosion, and you failed!"

"This is not Tali's fault, Koris," Han'Gerrel said. "She had no way of knowing that there was a functional AI on board the _Säänä."_

"And now there's a ship on the loose helmed by a sentient computer. I should have known this mission would go horribly wrong with Tali'Zorah in charge."

"You've always been a geth apologist, Koris; why are you are so concerned about a single AI?"

Zaal'Koris bristled at this. "The geth were never designed to be sapient," he snapped. "This computer Tali'Zorah encountered was designed and built by a madman for the sole purpose of killing organics. It was the height of foolishness not to destroy it, and this all but proves Tali's utter inability to command effectively!"

"Admiral, may I speak with you in private for a moment?" Gerrel said.

"Very well," he said, glaring at Tali. "You stay put; I'm not finished with you yet!"

The two of them walked off into a nearby room, although Tali could still hear their conversation.

"I fail to see why you are always defending her, Gerrel! Things explode around her; we're lucky she hasn't destroyed every single ship she's-" Koris' words were interrupted by a sharp _thud,_ followed by a stream of profanity.

"What the hell was that? This is very unbecoming behaviour of an admiral, and – _ow! _Stop that!"

"What's the matter, Koris? Can dish it out but you can't take it?"

There was another _thud,_ followed by something that sounded like a man being hit over the head with a chair. "Oh, so that's how you want to play it, Gerrel? Well, why don't you come here and take what's coming to you, you _bosh'tet?_"

"I'd like to see you try!"

There were more sounds of fighting and shouting, all the while Tali just shook her head. Now she was entirely convinced that she _never_ wanted to become an admiral herself.


	13. Heavy Metal Universe

Chapter 13 – Heavy Metal Universe

* * *

The next couple of months brought no good news. More human colonies had gone missing; the entire population having seemingly vanished without a trace. Most "official sources" blamed the disappearances on slavers or pirates, but why then were there no signs of an attack or a struggle? Tali knew that the Reapers were behind it somehow; obviously humanity had played such a large role in Sovereign's destruction that the Reapers had shifted their focus. Unfortunately there was nothing she could do about it, something that led to no end of frustration.

It happened one day that she was about to turn in for the night when Hrenn'Dael, the quarian she'd rescued from the Arcturus Geoscience vessel, came to see her, clearly excited about something.

"Remember when I said I was going to take down Arcturus Geoscience? Well, I've talked to an old friend of mine – a marine named Kal'Reegar - and he agreed that, with the help of you and your team, we can take these bastards out!" He slammed his hands together, displaying an enthusiasm Tali found worrying.

She stood up from her workstation. "Are you insane? You want to go attack some place on Earth?"

Hrenn was undeterred. "Your ship has a stealth system, Tali, and I can modify its registry to make it show up as an Arcturus vessel on scanners. We'll go low-emissions to hide our approach to the human homeworld, then once we're close enough to show up on their sensors they'll just think we're making a delivery to the company. Then we'll land a short distance from the company headquarters and make a full-on assault! It will be glorious!"

To her, it all sounded like so much madness. "You're going to get yourselves killed! I'm not going to be part of this!"

"This is for the good of the galaxy, Tali! You saw what sort of weapons this company was developing, and I don't have to tell you that they're not going to use them to a good end. And let me assure you, the one weapon you encountered wasn't the only one. My sources tell me that Arcturus Geoscience has developed a way to create an artificial black hole. Who knows what they'll do with that kind of power in their hands?"

"Forget it," she said, feeling a surprising surge of anger. "I have responsibilities here on the _Neema;_ I can't go flying off on some crazy mission you dreamt up!" At the same time, however, she knew that if it were Shepard asking her to do this, she would probably join up with him without a moment's hesitation.

"This is more important than the _Neema._ We're talking about the safety of the galaxy here. You heard what this 'Manala' organisation wants to do – they want to attack other races, and its up to us to stop them. Besides, I already talked to the rest of your team, and they've all signed on."

"What? They're all going to get themselves killed!"

Hrenn glared at a her in a way that was slightly threatening. "Without your help, they might. And think about it, Tali. Your crew thinks you've sold out your own people for humanity; by doing this mission you could change their opinion."

"I don't give a vorcha's ass what they think!" she snapped, coming across as more hostile than she intended.

"All right, if that doesn't convince, then maybe this will," said Hrenn, bringing up his omni-tool. "This is a conversation recorded by an Alliance surveillance device inside Arcturus Geoscience's HQ. They've been spying on the company for a while now, and with a little hacking on my part I've managed to 'liberate' some of their intelligence."

He punched a few buttons on the omni-tool, which played a recording of a conversation between two individuals.

_"The improved _Ukonvasara_ is nearly complete. We need an appropriate test target."_

_ "I suggest the quarian Migrant Fleet. They usually keep their distance from inhabited systems, and no one in the galaxy will care what happens to them."_

_ "Are you mad? You want to test this thing by attacking people?"_

_ "Of course! There's only so much we can learn from testing the _Ukonvasara_ on asteroids and dwarf planets. Besides, this is the sort of thing that will elevate Manala from ruthless pragmatism to true cartoonish supervillainy!"_

"You see, Tali? This concerns the safety of the entire flotilla!"

Admittedly, his evidence was convincing; if there truly was a threat to the Migrant Fleet, then she would not idly stand by. "Then we must bring this to the attention of the admiralty board."

"We can't wait while politicians argue, Tali. Besides, they've got concerns of their own that they're busy with."

Tali paused. "Wh...what do you mean?"

"You haven't noticed? You're an admiral's daughter, Tali; I'd think you'd know what goes on with the board."

"I...I try to avoid politics..."

He laughed. "I understand. Meet us at your ship whenever you're ready." Obviously Hrenn knew Tali would agree after that, and he was right. She was not convinced that this "mission" of theirs was anything but folly, but crazy misadventures like this had a way of finding her, and something told her that if she did not accompany her crew this time then something terrible would happen to them. Despite their terrible treatment of her and general incompetence, Tali still felt a sense of protectiveness towards them, as if they were misbehaving children she had to keep an eye on. That surprised her, because Tali didn't even _like_ children.

She packed up her Eviscerator and Carnifex and headed down the nearest docking cradle. If the admiralty learned what she was up to she would likely never hear the end of it. Tali didn't care. She was no longer convinced that the admirals truly had the fleet's best interests in mind, even though her father would have been aghast to hear her say such a thing.

The rest of her crew, along with Hrenn's friend Kal'Reegar, were already on board the _Kamala Kohtalo._ Reegar was one of the Migrant Fleet Marines, the closest thing the quarians had to a standing army. He had already loaded a large rocket launcher onto the ship and was presently bringing aboard yet another enormous gun that looked to Tali like a light machine gun.

Prazza could barely contain his excitement. "This is going to be _great!"_ he gushed. "I'm gonna kick those humans' asses so _hard _they'll be crapping boots!"

"You must be Tali'Zorah," said Reegar. "I have to say it's an honour to work with the woman who helped take down Saren."

"Oh...thank you," she said, unsure of how else to respond. That someone on her crew might show her actual respect was incredibly surprising. "You...you've certainly come prepared. What's that gun you're carrying?"

Reegar held it up for all to see. "This right here is the M-76 Revenant Light Machine Gun. It has a rate of fire of around 700 rounds per minute, with each thermal clip having a heat capacity for around 80 rounds, although with a few modifications I've managed to double that. Of course the gun itself is damned pricey, which is why mine was pried form the hands of a dead batarian pirate." He set the machine gun aside and picked up the rocket launcher. "And this here is the ML-77 Missile Launcher, which allows multiple independently target missiles to be fired in rapid succession – perfect for taking out entrenched snipers or gun platforms."

Hrenn chuckled. "Ah, Reegar. Always so eager to solve all your problems with bullets."

"That's the most reliable way to solve a problem! If at first you don't succeed, use a gun. If that don't work, use a _bigger_ gun."

"I still say we drop a nuke from orbit," said Vrael, looking back from the cockpit. There'd be nothing so goddamn sweet as watching a five megaton nuclear device detonate on the human homeworld."

"And then the entire Alliance goes to war with the Migrant Fleet," said Hrenn. "Maybe even the other Council races, too."

"Not if they don't know it was us quarians!"

Hrenn turned to Reegar. "Don't listen to him; he's a bit of a nutter."

"I heard that!"

It was clear to Tali that Reegar was less than pleased with the crew. "Look Hrenn, you told me that I'd be working with Tali'Zorah. You didn't say anything about the rest of these idiots!"

"Now Reegar, I know that Tali's crew might be a little...unconventional...but I know they'll be solid under fire."

"Solid? _Keelah,_ Hrenn, these people aren't soldiers! I wouldn't trust any of them with a screwdriver, let alone a gun! Hell, I'm amazed they haven't gotten themselves killed if I've read these mission reports right!"

His anger, strangely, made Tali feel very reassured, if only because it proved that this Kal'Reegar fellow had some sense to him, something that was sorely lacking in the rest of her crew.

"You worry too much, Kal. We'll be fine with them. The humans won't even know what hit em'!"

It would take them a couple of days to reach the nearest mass relay, and during that time Kal'Reegar asked her, with great curiosity, about her time with Shepard, and she was only too happy to oblige.

"Oh great, she's gushing again," Vrael would say whenever she began talking about her time on the _Normandy._

"So you and Shepard actually fought Saren and his geth on the Citadel?" Reegar said. "I heard there were hundreds of those synthetic bastards on the station. How did he get through them?"

"It takes more than a few geth to stop Shepard," she replied, with a noticeable measure of pride in her voice. "He's killed more geth than anyone I know."

"Well there's always more geth that need killing. Damn shame what happened to your old commander, Tali. At least he died in battle. That's the only proper way for a soldier to go. Reminds me of the time me and my friend got caught in the middle of the Skyllian Blitz."

Tali's eyes went wide. "You were in the Skyllian Blitz? I thought that was between humans and batarians."

"It was. See, I was on Pilgrimage in those parts, see, and my ship happened to get boarded by a batarian scout that thought I was delivering supplies to the human colony at Elysium. They came through the airlock and I started shooting, and when the smoke cleared every single one of them was dead. Took back their ship and presented it to my captain as my Pilgrimage gift! He was damned impressed with that one. He was less impressed with all the blood; guess I'd forgotten to clean it up."

"You shouldn't believe anything he says, Tali," said Hrenn with a laugh. "Kal here likes to invent stories about himself."

Reegar crossed his arms. "You're just jealous, Hrenn. You don't like the fact that I was the only quarian to fight in the First Contact War, or Relay 314 Incident, whatever the hell it's called these days."

"Wait," said Tali. "You couldn't have fought in that war! You would have been just a child then!"

"Hah, I was! Actually I was on a small salvage vessel with my father, who wanted me to experience the 'thrill' of salvage first hand. Well it was all going great until this turian frigate shows up. They must have thought we were Alliance, 'cause they knocked out our engines with one shot and moved to board."

"But they left when they realised your weren't human, didn't they?" Tali asked.

He shook his head. "No. Well, they_ might _have if dad hadn't been a bit delirious after a suit rupture he'd gotten during salvage. First turian that came aboard he shot so full of bullets that his corpse was probably more bullets than turian. I picked up a gun and started shooting too, and, well, at the end of the day there was the two of us and a whole lot of dead turians."

"Like I said, Tali, don't believe anything he says."

"That's a nice shotgun you got there," said Reegar, noticing Tali's Evisercator. "Mind if I take a look?"

She handed it to him. "Of course."

Reegar looked it over with an admiring look. "This is a fine gun you got here, ma'am. Reminds me of the one I used when I served in 'Nam during the Tet Offensive of '68. Learned a thing or two from Charlie, don't you know."

Hrenn rolled his eyes. "All right Kal, now you're just being ridiculous."

"Hey, show some respect!" said Reegar, pointing his finger at Hrenn. "You never had to spend day after day in the shit with mortars and shells going off all around you, and then seeing your best friend with his guts on his lap screaming at you, 'I wanna go home, Reegar! I wanna go home!' and all I can say is, 'With what? I can't find your legs! I can't find your _goddamn_ _legs!' _And his insides keep comin' out..._"_

"All right!" said Hrenn. "Forget I said anything!"

The next couple of days passed without incident, and not once did Tali receive word from the flotilla about why she had left all of a sudden. Either the admiralty was too busy with its own concerns to notice, or they were simply glad to be rid of her. Tali suspected the latter was closer to the truth.

During that time they finalised their plans for the attack. They would activate their stealth system once they hit the Charon relay, and from there they would make their way to Earth. Their stealth system wouldn't stop any ground- or ship-based scans from picking them up, but with their registry flagging them as an Arcturus Geoscience vessel making a routine delivery, no one would pay much attention to them. At least that was the plan. It would not surprise Tali in the slightest if it all went to hell.

According to Hrenn, Arcturus Geoscience's corporate HQ was located in a major city, but the _true_ heart of the company was at an isolated location, which Hrenn brought up on the ship's nav computer.

"Their main base of operation is here, at latitude 68.972886 north, longitude 26.854152 east. According to the nav computer, the northern hemisphere of Earth should be right in the middle of winter, and at this high a latitude the sun won't rise above the horizon. I've also learned that the area is quite heavily forested. Hopefully that, combined with the darkness, should conceal our approach. I've also got personal scanner jammers that I salvaged from some geth a while back; that'll keep us from showing up on their sensors. Heh, though they'll know we're there once we start shooting!"

Tali remained sceptical. "And what do we do once we're inside?"

"Then we'll destroy whatever research we find. We'll bring in enough high explosives to completely level the building, destroying any prototypes they might have built."

She asked herself again why she had agreed to this. It was essentially a commando raid, and no one in their crew except Kal'Reegar was an actual soldier. There were seven of them against who knew how many there were guarding the Arcturus facility, and there was a good chance that they were all heading towards their violent, gory deaths.

Hrenn brought up a map of the target area. "We'll land our ship on the northern shore of this lake here. From there, it's just over a kilometre to the Arcturus facility. I imagine there will be a security perimeter, manned by either guards or security mechs, depending on how much money they're willing to spend. We'll have to take out the guards and hack the security the system, which is where you come in."

"Do we have any idea of the layout of this place?"

He shook his head. "None. But I imagine it must be rather straightforward. The facility will have to be rather small in order to avoid attracting attention."

The _Kamala Kohtalo_ emerged from the Charon relay and immediately went into low-emissions mode. Being a small ship in the vast emptiness of space, none of the numerous Alliance vessels in the solar system noticed them. Unfortunately their ship also went much slower when travelling with the stealth system engaged, so it would take several hours for them to reach Earth. If Tali remembered the humans' solar system correctly, they had to pass four gas giants and one terrestrial planet before they reached Earth.

As they neared the human homeworld Tali wondered how many humans, or any other race that had a world to call their own, took their planets for granted. Most of them could probably not imagine what it was like never having solid ground beneath your feet, or not being able to feel the open air or sunshine on your skin. She could understand why so many of her people wanted to settle on some colony world, if only to have _something_ that they could call their homeworld.

Since their ship was coming in from the outer solar system, they would be approaching Earth's night side. Tali anxiously paced about the ship, worrying endlessly that someone would pick up their ship on scanners and immediately know that they were not supposed to be there. She told herself that most of the human patrols would be around the Charon relay, since that was the entry point for all ships coming into the solar system, but somehow that did little to relieve her anxiety. This whole mission was insane and she had been a fool to agree to come along.

It felt like an eternity before Earth was visible through the cockpit. Their ship was now in the planet's shadow, with only a thin blue crescent visible in the blackness of space. As they drew nearer they could see countless lights on the surface, forming a vague outline the major landmasses. Soon they could make out what were obviously large cities and towns. The area they were flying to had few lights, however, indicating that it was a sparsely-populated area. With any luck that would improve their chances of not being detected.

"Back to the miserable human homeworld," Skaal groaned. "Even Tuchanka is a better place than this hellhole."

Hrenn was incredulous. "You'd actually prefer a nuclear wasteland to this?"

"A wasteland has character. This planet does not."

"It gets worse," Vrael added. "According the scanners, the temperature at our landing zone is nearly thirty degrees below freezing, and there's a big snowstorm coming up. Damn it, Tali, why didn't you tell us this planet's axial tilt would result in such wild variations in weather?"

"They're called 'seasons,' Vrael, and most planets have them."

"That's why flying around without a planet of our own is the best choice," he growled.

A few minutes later they were descending through the atmosphere, keeping their velocity low all the while to hide any thermal emissions that might be generated from re-entry heat. "The sensor warning receiver isn't showing any scanners locked on to us. Guess the stealth system works."

"But the Arcturus facility will probably have ground-based scanners of their own, won't they?" said Tali.

"Actually, the probably won't," answered Hrenn. "They want to keep this location secret, and scanner emissions would give away its locations. Besides, they won't believe that anyone will actually attack the place. Let's hope that means fewer guards for us to deal with."

For the next few minutes Tali stared out the cockpit window, trying in vain to see the landscape below. In the darkness of the night, Tali didn't even notice they had touched down until she felt the ship lurch beneath her feet. When she looked outside the window she could see snow falling outside, and already she felt cold. Quarians could stand cold better than other races like asari or turians, but that didn't make it any more pleasant.

"All right, everybody out!" Hrenn said.

The _Kamala Kohtalo's_ airlock opened with a loud _hiss,_ followed by a blast of cold air that Tali could feel it even through her suit. A fierce wind howled through the air, reminding her instantly of the frozen planet of Noveria. The air temperature was even colder than that miserable place, and the fact that she could barely see twenty metres in front of her made it all that much worse.

_"Keelah,_" said Vrael as he stepped out of the ship. "It's even worse than I imagined. Maybe dropping a nuke from orbit was the right idea."

The only light came from the narrow sliver of the moon that was illuminated, so Tali switched her helmet to infrared display mode. It revealed a wooded area ahead, which was not unlike the area they had landed in during her trip back into Earth's past (she was quite eager to forget all about that particular mission).

While the rest of her crew complained about the cold weather, Reegar seemed to be enjoying himself. "Ah, this takes me back!" he said, looking around the snow-blown landscape. "Reminds me of when I fought in the Winter War of '39. Me and my friend took out a platoon of Soviet tanks with only a spark plug, some baling wire, and a bottle of vodka!"

With more moaning and complaining they made their way into the woods, their feet sinking up to their ankles in the snow, making for slow going. It was even slower for Juodaan, whose suit computer had been programmed with the idea that "alcohol makes you warmer" and as a result he was soon quite inebriated.

It was then that Tali noticed faint lights in the sky; a shifting pattern of red and green that seemed to dance about in the darkness. She had heard about this phenomenon before, it was called 'aurora,' and it was caused by the stellar wind interacting with the planet's atmosphere and magnetic field. Tali had never witnessed it in person before, and she found it eerily beautiful. Just one more thing most quarians would never experience without a world of their own.

"Just remember, everyone," said Vrael, "that Tali is a human-lover, which means she _wants_ to live in a place like this."

"What sort of absurd logic is that?" Tali retorted.

"Logic doesn't factor into anything you do, Tali."

"What?"

Reegar leaned in close and spoke softly. "Don't pay attention to him, ma'am. He's a nutter."

Vrael stopped. "The hell you just call me?"

"Eyes forward, maggot!" barked Reegar.

Tali didn't think it possible, but the snowstorm grew even greater in its ferocity. Her mask was starting to frost up and the cold was beginning to become truly unpleasant. How could anyone stand to live in this sort of weather? Their progress remained slow on account of the thick snow and rough terrain, and were it not for their omni-tools to guide them the quarians surely would have gotten lost by now.

About a half hour later they finally reached the outer perimeter of the Arcturus facility. It was surrounded by a high metal fence ringed with razor wire and possessing a narrow walkway that was patrolled by guards. The blizzard was too intense for them to see anyone in visible light, but in infrared Tali could make out a handful of guards along the fence as well as two standing in front of the main gate to the facility. The building itself was a large, rather featureless block of concrete with no windows or doors except the one past the gate. That meant they were going to have to go in that way, which precluded any sort of stealthy entrance.

The seven of them were huddled behind a large mound, though if the enemy had any sort of thermal scanners they probably would have picked them up a while ago. Fortunately they didn't seem to have anything of the sort, probably because they had assumed that no one would ever try attacking this place. With any luck that would also mean the interior was not well guarded.

"My suit scanners have four guards on the wall and two at the gates," said Reegar. "Good I think I decided to come with my combat suit; this makes me not only _want_ to kill everything in sight, but able to as well!"

Tali had never heard of such a thing before. "Combat suit?"

"It's like a powered exoskeleton," he replied. "Amplifies any movements I make. I can run faster, hit harder, leap higher, and shoot straighter than anyone in a regular envirosuit. If I had the creds I could have had a cloaking device installed, but that'd be kind of unfair to our enemies, don't you think?"

"Enough bantering! What's the plan?" said Vrael.

"There's another gun I brought that I didn't show you," Kal said, reaching behind his back and pulling out a rifle, which then expanded into a ridiculously huge weapon. "This here is the M-98 Widow Anti-Materiel rifle. Fires a 13mm tungsten slug at over 5000 metres per second; enough to take someone's head off along with the heads of the next twenty people standing behind the poor bastard! Normally firing it would shatter every bone in my body, but that's what my combat suit's strength mode is for. My plan is to snipe the guards on the fence while the rest of you take out the ones at the gate."

Prazza was having none of it. "Bah! Your talk of 'sniping' is cowards' talk! What are we, a bunch of campers? We're doing this _my_ way!" He then vaulted over the mound and charged towards the two guards at the gate.

"Prazza! Get back here!" Tali shouted, knowing full well he wouldn't listen to her.

"There he goes again," said Vrael flatly. "That magnificent bastard."

The two guards saw Prazza approaching and raised their guns. "Hey assholes!" Prazza cried. "You know what's about to happen? _The Praz'_ is about to happen! _WAAAGH!"_

Reegar was so stunned by the sheer stupidity of what was taking place that he was unable to speak for several seconds. "What...what the hell is he _doing?"_

"Making life hard for us," Tali muttered. "As always."

Prazza began firing wildly with his assault rifle, somehow managing to hit the two guards at the gate without getting hit himself, although he probably wasted around a hundred bullets doing so. This alerted the guards atop the fence, and seeing that Prazza was now seconds away from having his body riddled with enough bullets to supply an entire platoon of soldiers for a month, Reegar stepped out of cover and held up the Widow sniper rifle, which now appeared comically enormous. He took aim at the nearest guard and fired.

There was nothing funny about the gun's power, and the sound of it firing was like that of a grenade going off. The shot instantly ripped through the guard's shields and blew his head apart like a watermelon, and without a moment's hesitation Reegar trained his massive rifle on the second guard. A second later the entire upper half of the man's body was reduced to a fine red mist. The rest of the guards were likewise dispatched, each one in a scene that might best be described as "gruesomely comical."

Reegar grabbed Prazza by the arm and yanked him close. "What the hell is your malfunction, soldier?"

"I am Prazza," was all he could say.

Now that the guards were dealt with, all that remained were the heavy reinforced doors leading to the interior of the compound. "I should be able to hack through these," said Tali. "Give me a minute."

"No need, ma'am. That's why I brought _this_ along," Reegar said, lifting up the rocket launcher. "Everyone stand back!"

He fired the rocket launcher, which instantly blasted the doors open and happened to kill two guards standing just inside, both of whom were just two days away from retirement.

"Now let's get out of this damned cold," said Reegar as soon as the smoke had cleared. "Reminds me too much of when I marched into Russia with Napoleon back in 1812..."

The gateway led into a long, high-ceilinged hallway, supported by massive concrete columns. Everything here was made of steel and concrete, creating a rather oppressive and dismal atmosphere The company logo – depicting a enraged bear above the corporation's name – was carved into the far wall, as if anyone needed reminding whom they were working for. Of much greater concern was the security checkpoint just ahead, which was swarming with guards who were storming towards them, and who were all just two days away from retirement.

In amazing display of incredible courage (or suicidal overconfidence), Reegar couched his Revenant machine gun under one arm, the rocket launcher under the other, and waltzed towards the horde of guards, firing continuously. Not once did he lift his finger off the trigger of his gun, spraying a steady stream of furious flying lead at the enemy that cut through them like tissue paper. When another squad of guards burst in from a side room, Reegar simply turned and fired a rocket at them, which blasted them screaming into the air.

A voice thundered from the speakers. "_Hostiles in the compound! All guards to ground floor! Do _not_ let them advance!"_

An elevator door opened ahead, and more guards stormed out. Reegar had been planning for this, and quickly lobbed a grenade in their direction. They tried to return fire as they scattered, but their shots were easily soaked up by Reegar's shields. Not wasting a second, he began a second barrage of fire from his Revenant that mowed down nearly all of his attackers. Unfortunately his gun's thermal clip was at capacity, and there were still a handful of guards shooting at him. The rest of the quarians opened fire, and one of the guards shouted for a retreat. His orders were cut off by Reegar, who had just unsheathed his combat knife and flung it through the air, where it had embedded itself up to the hilt in the guard's head.

There were no more guards, at least not on this level. At that remained were the dead bodies of around fifty or so people that Reegar had gunned down, stabbed, or blown up.

"What are we waiting for?" he said, walking towards the elevator. "Time's a wastin'."

The seven of them filed into the lift, all of them thoroughly in awe at Kal'Reegar's incredible display of skill. On the lift's control panel were labels indicating what was to be found on the various levels: shipping/receiving, guard quarters, research labs, and administration. "We should hit the labs, find out what they're up to," said Hrenn.

"Aw hell," Reegar groaned. "Labs are no fun to fight in."

"What is fun to fight in?" Tali asked.

"Shopping malls, arenas, city streets, any place that's open and where they can't ambush you. Nothing I hate more than ambushes. Damn guerilla tactics, I saw enough of that crap in the Revolutionary War of 1776!"

The doors opened, and almost as soon as they did there came a storm of gunfire. The guards had set up barricades and cover, and as they were all just two days away from retirement, they were in a rather trigger-happy mood, hoping their last days with the company would be exciting.

All them took cover inside the lift; all, that is, except Reegar, who put his combat suit into speed mode, allowing him to cross the distance to the nearest pair of guards before they could react. He then switched his suit to strength mode, and in a scene that Tali would remember vividly for the rest of her days, _punched_ one the guards right through his head. With his other hand Reegar grabbed the second guard by the neck and held him in front, using his body to shield himself from the enemies' bullets. Shaking his hand free of the skull of the man he had just punched to death, Reegar grabbed his rocket launcher. He briefly moved the guard whose body he was using as a shield aside, then, using only one hand, fired his rocket launcher at the remaining guards. Being in cover did nothing to save them from the explosion.

_"What the hell are you people doing down there?"_ thundered the voice over the loudspeakers. "_All guards to the labs. Do _not_ let the intruders reach the singularity generator!"_

"Singularity generator?" said Tali. "What is that?"

Hrenn shrugged. "That must be the black hole generator I told you about. Whatever they're planning to do with it, it can't be good."

Vrael suddenly began firing off several shots. "We've got company!"

Guards poured into the hallway, which happened to be right in Reegar's line of fire. But when they saw him standing there – rocket launcher in one arm, machine gun in the other – they simply froze.

Even from behind his helmet he was capable of giving them a withering glare. "Which one of you _bosh'tets _wants to go first?"

No one answered.

"Then allow me to do the honours!"

With a single squeeze of the trigger the Revenant burst to life, spewing forth a phenomenal amount of bullets in a breathtakingly short period of time. The bodies of the guards thrashed and flailed as they were torn apart by his relentless shower of lead, and while the other quarians joined in with gunfire of their own, it was nothing next to the hell Reegar was presently unleashing.

"Where the hell did you find this guy, Hrenn?" Vrael asked after the shooting stopped. "I swear there's no face behind his mask, just another rocket launcher!"

"We go way back," said Hrenn. "From what I heard, the first thing they gave Kal right out of the womb was a gun!"

The hallway was lined with doors that led into a number of individual laboratories, but they were only concerned with the one marked _Singularity Generator Laboratory._ The doorway leading to that room was enormous, and naturally one needed security clearance to get in. That was no problem for Tali, who hacked the security system in a few minutes. Reegar offered to blow the doors open, but decided against it after seeing the countless signs on the door warning of intense mass effect fields, high radiation, strong gravity, and a whole host of other dangerous phenomena.

When Tali stepped inside the singularity generator lab, she was reminded of the engine room of the _Normandy._ It was cavernous, at least two full stories in height, and throbbing with enormous quantities of energy. The room itself was spherical, with a small walkway leading around the edge to what Tali guessed was a control or monitoring station. Four cylinders extended from the top and bottom of the room, surrounding something Tali did not believe was possible.

It was a sphere, suspended in the middle of the chamber. It was pure black in colour, radiating absolutely no energy whatsoever. "A black hole?" she said, stepping backward. "They actually created one in a laboratory?" Anyone who knew anything about astrophysics knew that anything falling into a black hole would never be seen again, except perhaps as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, although that would take place over a length of time greater than the age of the universe.

Vrael clenched his fists. "Who knows what these human bastards could do with this kind of power? We need to take this thing out! Juodaan, hand me the explosive charges!"

Juodaan looked around sheepishly. "Um...you wanted me to bring them?"

"Yes, you idiot! I told you a dozen times! Do you think we were just flying around with several kilos of high explosives just for the fun of it?"

"Oh, I...I forgot...well...maybe I could go back for them..."

"Forget it!" said Reegar. "They could bring reinforcements by then! I say we just shoot up the place until there's nothing left!"

A voice called out sharply from behind. "That would not be a good idea."

All seven of them turned around to find a man standing in the doorway to the singularity laboratory. But it was not just a man, it was another quarian.

"Tell me, do you know about the Pauli Exclusion Principle? It states that no two particles can occupy the same space and velocity. This principle is what keeps matter from collapsing in on itself into an infinitely small point. As you pack particles in tighter, there is less and less space for them, so the particles' velocities must differ by greater and greater amounts. But nothing may travel faster than light, so as the force pushing the particles together increases, you reach a point where even the Pauli Exclusion Principle cannot prevent a complete collapse. Normally you don't find such forces outside of the immense gravity of larger stars that have gone supernova and left behind black holes. But here, in the Arcturus Geoscience laboratories, we have managed to create a mass effect field strong enough to force a small amount of matter into a singularity, and with it create the first artificial black hole in the galaxy!"

"Yeah?" said Prazza. "And why do all those fancy words mean I can't start shooting?"

"Because, you idiot, you'll collapse the mass effect field, and when that happens, all that matter we've packed into infinitely small space will have nothing keeping it together! You'll all be destroyed in a massive explosive!"

Tali gripped tightly to her shotgun. "Who are you?" _Another insane scientist, it seems,_ she thought.

"Tasi'tasi vas Nedas," the man answered with a noticeable measure of pride in his voice.

Reegar glared at him. "That's not a name, son. You just called yourself 'no one of nowhere'."

He laughed. "And what better name for a quarian who wants nothing to do with the wretches his people have become? With the resources of Manala at my hand, I will destroy the Migrant Fleet and finish what the geth started."

_"What?_" Tali exclaimed. She could not be hearing this from a fellow quarian.

"Why the hell are you working for a human organisation?" Hrenn asked. "And one concerned with Finnish dominance at that?"

Again Tasi laughed. "Work for? I _am_ Manala! After I was exiled from the flotilla six years ago I came to Earth, seeking a new life. I could have chosen any country on this entire planet to go to, but I chose Finland for one reason, and one reason only!"

Reegar had both his machine gun and rocket launcher trained on him. "And what's that?" he snarled.

"Music."

That gave even Reegar pause. "Uh, what?"

"A man once said that you can judge a culture by their music, and of all the music in the galaxy there is no genre more powerful than..._metal!_ And this country produced the finest metal music I had ever heard! I knew then that it meant it was superior to all other human nations, and that is why I founded this organisation. Of course I might have gone to England; they did give the world Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden after all, but the weather there is just _so_ dreadful! That and their neighbours to the north are exceedingly unpleasant. Damn Scots."

Tali had to fight the urge to squeeze the trigger of her Eviscerator right then and there. "We won't let you endanger the fleet," she declared.

"Oh, you would say that, wouldn't you, Tali'Zorah? Yes, I know who you are. Seeing you in action against Saren almost made me believe we had hope as a species. But like all the others you still foolishly cling to your miserable existences, failing to realise that our time is over! The geth won, Tali! When we created them we created our replacements. Now we wander the galaxy, a miserable, cast-off, pathetic excuse for a species! Destroying the Migrant Fleet is like putting a man dying in agony out of his misery. I will set off one of these black holes right in their midst, or perhaps use the Twin-Axial Magnetohydrodynamic Neutron-degenerate Matter/Antimatter Cannon to annihilate them. Either way the fleet will perish, and all the ships not destroyed in the explosion will be subject to lethal levels of gamma ray radiation that will kill everyone aboard!" He turned around, thinking for a second. "Hmm, Gamma Ray, now there's a good band. I always thought _Shine On_ was rather applicable to the rather sorry state of our people."

"Shows you what happens when you spend too much time with these humans," Vrael muttered. "In case you haven't realised, Tasi, there are seven of us, each with a gun pointed directly at you. In less than a second we can hit you with so many bullets there won't be enough left of you to fill a tin can!"

"He's right," Reegar added. "I fought alongside King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, you know. You don't scare me."

Tasi howled in laughter. "Oh you could shoot me, but you won't. Deep down you know you could never bring yourselves to kill a fellow quarian; it's been ingrained in your mind ever since you were a child. So no, you _won't_ shoot me."

A sudden burst of fire from Reegar's Revenant cut through the air, dropping Tasi in a heartbeat. "I just did," said Reegar in deadpan tone.

"Well, that was over faster than I expected," said Vrael. "So, thanks to Juodaan's brilliant job in _not_ bring the explosives, how are we going to blow this place?"

Tali walked over to the monitoring station. "I should be able to hack into the control system and place the facility's reactor into overload. We'd have about five minutes to get out at most."

"Do it," said Reegar. "I've been itching to see something blow up!"

Like an artist at work Tali began her hack of the facility's network, working her way through the firewalls and into the main server. The server ran Linux, which was always a pain (Tali _hated_ command lines), but within a few minutes she had root access, which she then used to initiate an overload of the main reactor. No sooner had she done so than sirens began wailing and angry red warning lights began flashing, followed by an automated voice announcing that all personnel were to evacuate immediately.

"Let's get out of here!" she cried, not that her crew needed to hear it.

They all began running as fast as their legs would carry them, down the hall and over the countless bodies of all the people Kal'Reegar had gunned down. "Damn, this is exhilarating!" he exclaimed. "Haven't had such a thrill since I fought the Saxons at Hastings in 1066!"

As soon as they were all inside the elevator Tali hit the button for the ground floor. The lift began to move agonisingly slowly, and the situation was not helped by the horrendous elevator music that began playing.

_"Warning," _announced the automated voice, "_Main reactor temperature exceeding safety limits. All personnel evacuate the facility immediately. Close all stores on the shopping level. Secure all animals in the zoo."_

The doors opened and the seven quarians sprinted for the exit, hurdling the corpses of the guards Reegar had slain (all of whom had been just two days away from retirement). As they neared the ruined main gate the ground began to shake beneath them, which Tali took to be the beginning of the explosion of the main reactor.

Soon they were running through the blowing snow, none of them even looking back. Any second now the reactor was going to go critical and send the entire facility up in one enormous explosion. Having seen much greater explosions in her time, Tali was not particular anxious about this one.

Only there was no explosion.

Instead of causing it to blow up, the overload caused the reactor to emit a surge energy millions of times stronger than its usual output. This burst of energy was directed into the mass effect fields in the singularity generator laboratory, which increased in strength by a factor of nearly a billion. They were now so strong that the entire building began imploding in on itself, and it all happened faster than the blink of an eye. The facility and everything inside it was instantaneously compacted into an object smaller than the Planck length, meaning that it was now too small to exist. All that remained was a huge, perfectly hemispherical crater in the ground. Tali didn't even seen it happen; the building was there one second and gone the next.

"_Keelah,_" she said, still gasping for breath. "That...that was not what I expected to happen."

* * *

With its stealth system engaged, the _Kamala Kohtalo_ quickly made its way off earth and towards the Charon relay. Everyone aboard was filled with pride over the successful completion of their mission, though they were quite distraught at the notion that one of their own could have betrayed the flotilla so completely. To Tali, it was unthinkable that a quarian could turn on his people like that. But they had stopped the traitor from carrying out his nefarious plans, and hopefully struck a blow against this "Manala" organisation from which it would not recover. Now, if only they could do the same against Cerberus...

"Can I ask you something, ma'am?" Reegar said, keeping his voice low.

"What is it, Kal?"

"It's about your crew, ma'am. I saw what you did with Shepard, how you stopped Saren and his geth from conquering the Citadel. I'd think after that you'd be given a good ship and a good crew. Well, your ship is good, but your crew..."

"They're not very good, are they?"

"Exactly, ma'am. Hell, Prazza very nearly got himself killed, and the rest didn't so much as lift a finger to help us. Hrenn told me that they were solid under fire, but they were more like Queen Boudica's Britons in the Battle of Watling Street in AD 61. I should know; I was there."

Tali sighed. "I don't know, Reegar...I don't think the admiralty board likes me very much. Maybe it's just Admiral Koris; I don't know. It looks like I'm going to be stuck with them for...well...I don't know how long..."

"Damn shame, ma'am; you deserve a good crew at your back. You know, we could always use someone with your skills in the Migrant Fleet Marines."

She laughed. "Thanks, but I'm an engineer, Kal, and I don't want to be anything else."

"One more thing, ma'am. That Prazza, he isn't..._the _Prazza, is he?"

It was clear where this was going. "You mean the one who posed in that dirty magazine? Yes, that's him."

Reegar shook his head. "_Keelah, _Tali, the admirals must really hate you! I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in your position. I guess I should be glad they got nothing but respect for me, especially after that time I killed a whole platoon of geth with only a rusty butter knife. They know I'm good at coming out on top when were terribly outnumbered; heh, I proved that I when I fought alongside King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC."

It would take them several days to return to the flotilla, which would give Tali some time to prepare her explanation to the admirals for her absence. There was no doubt in her mind that they were _really_ going to let her have it this time, as she had departed her ship without leave and given no explanation for her absence. With any luck they would see how she had stopped a grave threat to the Migrant Fleet and overlook her transgressions, but Tali's life so far had been characterised by anything but luck. Yet by this point she had ceased to care what the admirals thought, or even what punishments they might mete out to her.

_Politics,_ she thought, gazing out the window into the empty blackness of space, _go anywhere in the galaxy and it's all the same._

* * *

"This is an _outrage!_" Koris thundered, slamming his fist on the table. "Tali'Zorah shirked her duties aboard the _Neema_ to go on some mad commando raid on the human homeworld. I demand that this board severely censure Tali'Zorah and greatly restrict her duties before she blows up the entire fleet!"

Gerrel rolled his eyes. "She stopped a madman from using a weapon of mass destruction against the fleet. Tali'Zorah deserves a bloody medal for what she did! And I doubt Kal'Reegar, a decorated Migrant Fleet Marine, would have gone along with the mission if it were not important. And besides, it was not even Tali'Zorah's idea even in the first place; she merely chose to take part for the safety of the fleet."

Koris was left speechless for a moment. "I...I see, but..."

"And that is why I have already assigned Tali to another mission..."

"You _what?_ Admiral, Tali'Zorah is reckless and unpredictable. Nearly every assignment this board has sent her on has resulted in some catastrophe of epic proportions! I oppose this utterly!"

"Aren't there some waste reclamators on the _Qwib Qwib_ that need fixing, admiral?" Gerrel sneered. "Have you got that registry fixed yet? It must be rather embarrassing to have _vas Qwib Qwib _stuck to your name."

That was exactly the one thing that could set Koris off. "The _Qwib Qwib_ is a dame fine ship, admiral, with a damn fine crew. That its name is a vulgar word for a certain part of the female anatomy in our language is _entirely_ coincidental!" He then turned his wrath on Tali. "And you, Tali'Zorah, you are exactly like your father – the only thing you understand is chaos and destruction! You must have gotten it from your old human commander. It's a good thing he died; any more time spent with him and you would have put the galaxy in danger of exploding!"

His words caused a surge of anger to well up within Tali. "You don't say things like, _bosh'tet!"_ she said, pointing her finger at Koris.

"Enough, Koris!" Gerrel snapped.

Zaal'Koris said nothing, storming out of the room in a huff. "I apologise for his behaviour, Tali," said Han'Gerrel. "The recent...discussions...amongst the rest of the admirals have had all rather...stressed. But as I said earlier, the board has another assignment for you and your crew; something rather, well, low-key."

"What is it, admiral?" she asked quietly, knowing that "low-key" simply meant "slightly less chance of something catastrophic occurring."

"There's a young quarian named Veetor'Nara who is on Pilgrimage," he began. "Veetor suffers from severe problems with anxiety, and he is unable to deal with crowds, which is pretty much the worst problem a quarian can have. Because of this he went to a small, isolated human colony named Freedom's Progress. Since he arrived there he has been in constant contact with the fleet, but for the past few days we've heard nothing from him. His family is worried, and we want to send someone to find out what's happened to him. It could be that the colony is simply having problems with its communications problems, but we'd like you to investigate it, at any rate."

"Understood, admiral." It seemed simple enough – go to some human colony and find this Veetor, then bring him back. Of course, Tali knew from experience that there always a chance that things could terribly, horribly wrong. But maybe the universe was going to give her a break this time. Maybe nothing unexpected would happen. Maybe there would be no huge explosion or horrific cataclysm. With those thoughts in mind, Tali began preparations for the mission.


	14. Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye

Chapter 14 – Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye

* * *

Vrael was clearly displeased with their present assignment. "Oh great, _another_ place filled with humans. Why can't we go some place nice, like an asari pleasure planet or something?"

Tali had long since blocked his complaining from her mind, instead focusing on the nav readouts. There was surprisingly little data about this human colony they were going to, and she got the impression that they were the sort of colony that didn't like outsiders meddling in their lives. Yet they had allowed a quarian to work for them, so Tali assumed that they would not be too upset with their visit.

She noticed that her crew seemed unusually on edge, with Vrael and Prazza pacing about the ship, while Juodaan was intoxicated and Skaal was listening to his ultra-depressing music. Prazza had brought aboard three other people: the first was his latest girlfriend, a woman named Shanna'Tran, and the others were two of Prazza's "friends" named Ekki'Klug and Ljót'Andlit, who, to no one's surprise, weren't exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer. Tali's mind was elsewhere, however, in particular she was thinking about yet another mission the admiralty board had foisted on her, to be completed as soon as she returned from Freedom's Progress.

According to the admirals, there was a planet within geth spaced named Haestrom, the site of a former quarian colony. The planet's sun was, according to Admiral Koris, "doing some weird star...thing...that stars shouldn't be doing at that point in their lives." More specifically, something was reducing the mass of the star's core, causing thermonuclear reactions to slow. As these thermonuclear reactions acted as a brake against the star collapsing under its own gravity, their slowing meant that the core was beginning to contract and heat up, resulting in the fusion of hydrogen in a layer just outside the core. In turn this was causing the star to expand, and according to recent surveys the star's luminosity had increased nearly a hundred times in the past 300 years. That meant that Haestrom would be hit with a fierce solar wind that overpowered is magnetosphere, and combined with the fact that it was in geth space, Tali was not looking forward to this mission at all. She was somewhat reassured by the knowledge that Kal'Reegar would be accompanying her, along with a full squad of marines.

Ekki and Ljót came up to her, and Tali could tell at once that she was not going to enjoy this conversation. "Um, so could you tell us again what this mission's about?" said Ekki. "We, uh, kinda forgot."

She sighed. "It's simple. We search the colony, find Veetor, and bring him back to the flotilla."

Ljót looked puzzled. "So, let me get this straight: search the colony, kill Veetor, and bring back the flotilla?"

Ekki rolled his eyes. "No, you idiot! She said we have to find Veetor, kill the colony, and bring the flotilla!"

Tali could not believe what she was hearing. "No, no one kills anyone! We search the colony, find Veetor, and _then_ bring him back _to_ the flotilla."

This only seemed to confuse them more. "So let me just see if I'm understanding this right," said Ekki. "We search Veetor, find the colony, and kill the flotilla."

"No, you stupid _bosh'tet!_" growled Ljót. "We find Veetor, search the flotilla, and bring back the colony!"

"I believe your being facetious, Ljót!" Ekki retorted. "Tali'Zorah specifically said that we were to kill Veetor _and_ the colony, and then bring their corpses back to the flotilla."

Tali had to restrain herself from hitting them. "We're just here to look _through_ the colony, find Veetor, wherever he is, and bring him back! No killing!"

Ekki smiled and nodded. "I get it now. We find Veetor, bring the flotilla to the colony, and kill everyone."

"No, no!" howled Ljót. "We kill Veetor, bring the colony to the flotilla, and _then_ have them kill everyone. I distinctly remember that being what Tali'Zorah said we are supposed to do!"

This only upset Ekki further. "Look, I'm not going to risk insubordination on your say-so! I believe we are to kill the flotilla, bring back Veetor, _then_ search the colony."

"What's wrong with you?" Tali exclaimed. "There's not supposed to be any killing on this mission! Did Prazza give you that idea or what?"

They did not answer for a moment. "Come to think of it," Ekki said, "I believe Prazza told us to find the colony, search the flotilla, and kill Veetor."

"He did not!" Ljót snapped. "I distinctly recall him saying that we were to find Veetor, search the colony, and then bring the flotilla."

"Well that makes no sense at all!" said Ekki. "What if we don't find Veetor? Then we're supposed to kill the colony, and bring the rubble back to the flotilla."

It was clear that there was no reasoning with these two, so Tali just walked away, making a mental note to keep these two as far from Veetor from possible during the mission.

Vrael called from the cockpit. "You'd better come see this!"

Something stirred in her gut, telling her that something unexpected had happened. It was a feeling she was quite accustomed to by now.

Outside the cockpit glass loomed the planet on which they colony had been established. It was a typical blue-green garden world, a place ripe for colonisation, or at least it would be were it not in the Terminus Systems and therefore beyond the protection of the Council or the Alliance.

"What's the problem?" Tali asked.

"I'm not picking up any human lifesigns," Vrael replied. "This colony is supposed to have a population of several hundred thousand, but I've got nothing on the scanners. All I've got is one quarian – I assume that's Veetor – and several mechanical signatures."

"Geth?"

"No, I'm not getting any geth comm chatter. Security mechs, probably."

Tali crossed her arms. "Something must be wrong with the scanner. Did you run a diagnostic."

Vrael rolled his eyes. "Of course I did! I ran it through a full level 1 diagnostic and everything checked out."

"Well we won't know more until we're on the ground. Bring us in."

Tali didn't like this at all. She tried telling herself that it must have been a hardware fault with the scanners that the diagnostic hadn't detected, but she didn't really believe that. No, it was far more likely that something terrible had happened to the colony, and it was at that moment that she remembered all those extranet news reports about human colonies vanishing. Could that be what had happened here?

As the _Kamala Kohtalo_ descended through the planet's atmosphere, they could see that the colony was in the middle of the winter, something that made the rest of her crew groan with displeasure. "Another frozen hell-hole," Vrael mumbled just before their ship touched down. "The admiralty owes us for this, big time."

Through the windows they could see little, as it was the middle of night and everything was covered with snow. "Where's Veetor?" said Tali.

Vrael glanced down at the monitor. "I've got him on scanners. He's moving away, fast, towards what looks to be some sort of shipping and receiving area."

Tali grabbed her pistol and shotgun and headed to the airlock. "All right, we don't know what we're going to find out there, so everyone stay alert. Just remember to be careful with Veetor; from what I've been told, he does not react well to...stress."

"What she means is, he's crazy. Loopy. A complete nutter," said Prazza.

Ekki and Ljót stepped forward. "So that's why we've got to kill him, then?"

"What? No! No one kills anyone!"

Prazza's head sank. "Aw, you're no fun."

"Ekki, Ljót, you stay with the ship and update us on Veetor's location." Tali wasn't going to take any chances with those two; not that she trusted the rest of her crew much more.

When they stepped out of the ship they were immediately hit with a wave of cold air. How did humans tolerate such cold temperatures? Tali wondered. The colony itself was unremarkable, consisting of numerous prefabricated modular habitats arranged rather haphazardly. While the air was chilly, even more chilling was the deathly silence that hung over the place. There was not a sound to be heard, not even the wind. If the colony had been attacked, then there ought to be signs of battle – scorch marks, bullet holes, that sort of thing – but there was nothing. It was as if everyone had just gotten up and wandered off.

Skaal looked over the silent scene before him and gave a weary sigh. "The humans hate us so much that they all ran away before we landed. How typical. And the weather had turned most unpleasant just to rub salt in the wound. I would ask if we were made to suffer, but I already know the answer."

"Prazza!" Shanna cried. "My suit is chafing! We could have stopped to buy some skin lotion, but _nooo..." _From the first words she spoke everyone could tell that Prazza's latest girlfriend was an insufferable nag.

He turned to face her. "We'll get the lotion _after,_ dear..."

"And I still don't see why you had to drag me along on this stupid mission! I said we should have gone to see _Fleet and Flotilla,_ but you insisted I come here. You owe me for this, Prazza!"

Their bickering was interrupted by a burst of gunfire. Tali immediately ducked into cover behind a large crate while the rest of her crew scattered. Peeking over the top of the crate, she saw a pair of LOKI security mechs advancing on their position, firing at them with their machine pistols. Luckily for them, security mechs typically had very limited AI programming, being able to do little except walk forward and shoot. The moment she heard a break in their fire, Tali leaned out of cover and squeezed the trigger of her Carnifex, blasting one of the mech's heads clean off. For some inexplicable reason, this caused the mech to explode, taking its companion as well.

"The hell?" Vrael exclaimed. "Why would these mechs shoot at us?"

Skaal shrugged. "Perhaps they were programmed to attack any non-humans on sight? Figures that they hate us so much they cannot even try to kill us themselves, and must useless these miserable mechanical men to do it for us."  
"That doesn't make sense," Tali said. "If they attacked non-humans, then they would have attacked Veetor as well. He must have reprogrammed them to attack anyone besides him. Maybe he was trying to defend himself against the people who attacked this colony?"

Ekki's voice crackled over the radio. "Uh, Tali? We've got a problem. I think."

_What now? _she thought. "What is it?"

"A ship just entered the atmosphere; a shuttle, and according to the scanners it belongs to Cerberus!"

Vrael swore loudly. "Those bastards? What the hell are they doing here?"

Prazza could not contain his excitement at the possibility of a battle. "If they attack us, I will kill them all so hard they'll die from it!"

"That's not all," Ekki continued. "There's a lot more mechs crawling around, mostly near the loading bay."

"First things first," said Vrael. "Let's get out of this damned cold!"

The six of them took shelter in one of the habitats, which was eerily deserted, just like the rest of the colony. There was cold food sitting on the tables, as if the inhabitants had just decided, for no good reason, to abandon whatever they were doing and disappear. How could someone attack a colony and leave so few signs of struggle? Veetor was the only one who could tell them what happened here.

Prazza brought up his omni-tool display, which showed a map of the colony. The rest of the squad huddled around it, all of them shivering from the cold. "All right, here's how things are going to go down," said Prazza. "There are at least twenty mechs in the loading bay. I say we charge in with guns blazing, causing the mechs to flee in terror at our righteous fury!"

Tali groaned. "They're mechs, Prazza! They don't feel fear!"

He was undeterred. "Then we shall all go out in a blaze of glorious triumph! Or was that triumphant glory? I forget which."

At that point, Tali wanted to cry. Why did her assignments always have to turn out so terribly? Why was she still stuck with the same crew after two years? She started asking herself what she could have done to piss off the universe so much that it gave her no end of bad luck and misfortune. She didn't want to be in charge any more. She didn't want to lead a team. All Tali wanted was to go back to being an engineer, which was all she ever wanted. Was that too much to ask?

"We've got to find another way past these mechs," she said. "Perhaps we should split into two teams."

Prazza wasn't going to hear any of it. "Your plan is cowards' talk! I demand we make a frontal assault!"

"I'm the one in charge here, Prazza!" Her tone was much angrier than she intended. She just wanted to be back on the flotilla, to not have to worry about any more assignments or missions. That wasn't going to be happening any time soon. When this mission was over she would have to go to some former quarian colony in geth space, which was about appealing as being down with a fever for two weeks. Obviously the admirals had figured that, with her reputation for causing things to explode around her, that she would take out lots of geth during her mission.

She was broken from her thoughts by the sound of gunfire outside. "Must be those Cerberus assholes!" said Prazza, gripping tightly to his assault rifle. "I hope those mechs kill them all."

Cerberus was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now. Why were they here? Were they trying to find out what had happened to the colony? Or were they responsible somehow? From what she'd seen of them in the past, Cerberus was capable of just about anything.

Suddenly the door to the habitat opened, and from where she was standing Tali saw the silhouettes of three figures step into the room. Prazza was on them in an instant.

"Hold it right there, Cerberus assholes!" he cried. "You are in the presence of the _The Praz',_ and he demands that you be in awe!"

Tali rushed over to him, hoping to stop him before he did anything stupid. "Prazza! Let me handle this!"

Then she got her first look at the intruders. The first was a dark-skinned man who looked unusually disinterested with what has happened. The second was a rather whorishly-dressed woman, and the third...

Tali nearly fell over backwards. _No,_ she thought. This was simply _not possible. _If it were, surely the whole universe was seconds away from utter annihilation.

"Shepard?" she exclaimed, taking a step back. "You're...alive?"

A thousand thoughts rushed through her head. Obviously it couldn't really be Shepard, could it? There had to be another explanation. Maybe he was a clone? That was certainly not beyond Cerberus. Or maybe it was just someone who happened to look a lot like him? But when Tali looked into his eyes, every part of her was telling that this was indeed Shepard. Still, it was not enough to override her common sense.

"Who...what...are you?" she said, her voice trembling. "Don't come any closer!"

He stepped forward. "Look, Tali, I'll prove it's...wait, did you just call that man 'Prazza?'"

Prazza was now sticking his gun right in Shepard's face, something which, if it really were Shepard, was just about the dumbest thing he could do. "I'm the _goddamn Praz'!"_ he said. "Fear me!"

The dark-skinned man spoke. "You mean the quarian who posed in that pornographic magazine? I heard about that. A lot of people went insane after that issue came out."

"Damn it!" Prazza cried, stamping his foot in anger. "I was desperate! I needed the money! Why does everyone keep bringing that up?" He then returned to pointing his gun at Shepard. "Just give me a reason to put this next round through your heads, Cerberus assholes!"

Shepard was not terribly bothered by Prazza. "Remember when I gave you that geth data, Tali? From the Armstrong Cluster? Did it help you finish your Pilgrimage?"

She froze. "Yes...it did..." she stammered, unsure of what to think now. If this were a clone, then surely he wouldn't know about that? Yes, it _had _to be Shepard; she was completely certain now.

"I don't believe this!" Vrael howled. "He helped you with your Pilgrimage? That...there's got to be a rule against that sort of thing!"

Prazza was clearly of the same mind. "I'm not taking any chances with Cerberus assholes!"

"Prazza!" she shouted. "Put that gun down!"

He glanced at her. "What? Are you crazy? We should kill them all!"

The thought of Shepard being alive filled with all manner of emotions which were coursing through her mind too quickly for her to process. "Prazza, you have five seconds to stop pointing that gun at Shepard!"

He ignored her. "I'll bet these Cerberus assholes killed everyone in this colony, and now they're going to kill us to cover up their little secret. I won't let happen! I will kill them all for the glory of the fleet!"

"_Four!"_

"When I bring the heads of these Cerberus assholes back to the fleet, they will hail me as a hero; the man who iced the Spectre traitor Shepard!"

"_Three!"_

He turned and glared at her. "You're so quick to trust Cerberus assholes, Tali? Look what they did to the fleet!"

"_Two!"_

"Ha! You're not really going to stop me, are you Tali? You don't have the guts!"

_"One!"_

The thought of shooting him crossed her mind, but she could never bring herself to turn her gun on one of her own kind, even if that person were someone as insufferable as Prazza. Instead she hit him on the back of the head with her gun, which was enough to make him drop his weapon."

"Wh...what? You hit me! Only my mum ever hits me!"

Vrael stepped forward. "Why is your old 'friend' working for Cerberus, Tali? Not that such treachery is at all unexpected!"

"You saw what happened to the _Normandy,_ Tali. I _died,_ and the next thing I know, I wake up in some Cerberus facility where they tell me they've spent the last two years rebuilding me."

"Unlikely!" said Prazza. "No organisation would commit so many resources to bring back one soldier!"

Shepard cast Prazza an annoyed glance. "Well, they did."

Merely speaking to him was enough to enrage Prazza. _"I said nothing to you, human!"_ he thundered, pointing his finger right in Shepard's face.

"You haven't seen Shepard in action, Prazza!" she retorted.

Vrael laughed. "I'm sure you saw plenty of 'action' with him, Tali!"

She ignored him and turned back to Shepard. "We're looking for a young quarian on Pilgrimage named Veetor. When he saw us landing he ran and hid in the shipping and receiving area."

Shepard frowned. "Isn't that a bit odd? A quarian going to a human colony?"

"We can choose where we go on Pilgrimage. Veetor liked the idea of helping a small colony; he was always...nervous...in crowds."

"What she means is, he was crazy," said Prazza, picking his gun up off the floor. "Kooky! Loony! Stark raving mad! Not right in the head! A few objectivists short of Galt's Gulch!"

"Then maybe we should work together," said Shepard. "Veetor's the only one who can tell us what happened here."

"Good idea. You'll need two squads to get past the mechs, anyway."

Prazza was incredulous. "What? Now we're working for Cerberus?"

"No Prazza, you're working for me. If you can't handle that, then go sit in the corner!"

Shepard and his two companions turned to leave. "Be sure to keep in radio contact."

"Will do. And Shepard...it...it's good to have you back." Someone Tali felt she should have said more than that, but now was not the time.

"All right," she said to her crew. "Let's move out."

Instead, Vrael just crossed her arms and Prazza stared at her defiantly. "You're no longer in charge of this mission, Tali," Prazza said.

"You're so quick to trust your old commander, Tali, even if he's working for the enemy. That all but proves how little loyalty you have to the fleet."

Normally such mutinous words would have shocked her, but a part of her was telling her that she should have expected this. "We don't have time for this! I know Shepard; he wouldn't be working with Cerberus if he didn't have a good reason!"

"I don't care what his reasons are, Tali," Vrael said angrily. "We'd be willing to tolerate your perverted fantasies as long as you kept them to yourself, but now you want to go run off with your old commander and get groiny with him!"

"They want to take Veetor away and do terrible, horrible things to him!" said Prazza. "I saw the look in that woman's eyes; she wants to get him in the sack! We're going to stop them!"

From the look of them the rest of her crew was going to follow Prazza, meaning that her already-tenuous authority over her squad was now at an end. "You'll all be killed!" she cried. "You can't just go charging ahead! We had a plan, remember?"

Now considering himself free of Tali's "leadership," Prazza no longer felt he had to show her any shred of respect. "_You shut your whore mouth when I'm talking!"_ he thundered.

"Prazza is in command now," Vrael said, an odious air of smugness to his tone. "When we return to the fleet, we shall tell them just how quickly you were to trust Cerberus. I'm sure they'll be _delighted. _You think you're special because you're an admiral's daughter, Tali? You think that gives you the right to go gallivanting across the galaxy on some big noble quest, leaving your own people behind? Just look at you now, so eager to go run off with your old captain because of a few missing _human_ colonies! But one day you'll return to the fleet; we all have to. And the fleet is the only thing you'll _ever_ know. You'll never set foot on the homeworld; none of us will."

Prazza was now climbing atop a crate in preparation for a speech. "My fellow quarians! Today we strike a blow against our hated enemy Cerberus, and cast off the yoke of the treacherous Tali'Zorah! We have served together for many years, and I'm proud to say that I would gladly have each and every one of you die for me!" He stumbled a bit, realising what he had just said. "Err, wait. That came out wrong. What I mean to say is, we should all be brave, because you're all brave quarians, and uh, I'm in command. Yes, that's it! I'm in command! And, well...oh, this isn't going to be very pleasant, is it? I've been working on this speech ever since we set out, and I thought it would take me just as long to say it as it did to come up with it. Oh, well, guess I better make the most of this time, then." He mumbled something, trying desperately to come up with something more to say. "Say, the weather isn't too bad for this time of year, isn't it? Not that I would know, living on a ship and all that, plus the weather _here_ isn't all that great, is it? Still, could be worse. Could be raining. Um, what else was I going to say? Oh yes! Wasn't the nutrient past on the way here delightful? I swear the people working back at food processing really outdid themselves on that one. You know I worked a few months down in food processing. Got kicked out for taking some extra nutrient paste for myself, stupid bastards! It was just a few canisters. I swear that asshole captain Shran'Tor must have it in for me or something...and what was I talking about again? Oh, right! The mission! Well, there's a bunch of mechs up ahead, and we've got to fight them, I guess. It might be hard, or something like that. Going into a battle outnumbered...I just hate doing that in _Galaxy of Fantasy._ It's a real pain in the ass unless you got a mage with the Ardat-Yakshi specialisation. They got some wicked CC skills. Unless you walk into a beef gate, that is. Goddamn ogres just grab you and punch you to death. I _hate_ that. Pisses me off almost as much as the damn noobs in _Code of Duty._ They just waltz into a room with their damn noob-cannon Revenants and spam bullets, and suddenly they're on the top of the server! Sorry, but your 50:1 K/DR don't impress me much when you're using a weapon that doesn't even require you to aim! That's when you're not dealing with TKers and griefers. God I hate those guys! Did I ever tell you about that one time I..."

Vrael had finally had enough. "By our blessed ancestors, Prazza, _get on with it!"_

"Oh yes, the mission! We'll give these mechs 110%! Now let's get out there and show them what we're made of! They will know fear for the first time in their lives, because _I...am...PRAZZA...and I...AM...COMING! WAAAAAAAGH!"_

They all let out battle cries before charging out of the habitat, leaving Tali alone in her stunned silence. Her crew had completely abandoned her, something she should have known would happen sooner or later. She called Shepard on the radio.

"Shepard! Prazza rushed on ahead! I told him to stop but he wouldn't listen. You need to hurry to the loading bay!"

She picked up her gun and ran after her crew. Maybe it was not too late to save them. Fortunately the loading bay was only a short distance away, but she could already hear gunfire. According to her map of the colony, there was a heavy reinforced door blocking Shepard's squad from the bay, so she set to work hacking the door controls. She could see Prazza and the rest of the crew just ahead, currently battling it out against a group of LOKI mechs. They seemed to be winning, in spite of their horrendous aim and complete lack of fire control, until Tali heard the unmistakable sound of an YMIR-class heavy mech powering up. This was bad news for her crew, as YMIR mechs only had two settings: "off" and "kill."

Prazza, of course, had absolutely no sense of mortality, and was leading his men in a frontal assault against the heavy mech. Tali was shocked that they would follow someone so blatantly unsuited for command. They must have _really_ hated her.

"Come on you metal bastard!" Prazza cried. "Give me all you got, I can take it! I'm the goddamn _'Praz!_ I am the beginning and the end! _I am the final boss of the extranet!"_

Tali took cover in one of the habitats and called up Shepard on the radio. "Veetor reprogrammed a heavy mech! It's tearing Prazza's squad apart!"

"We're in position!" came his reply. "Open the loading bay door!"

With a few pushes of some buttons on her omni-tool, the door opened, but by now the YMIR was already making hamburger of her crew. It stomped Prazza's girlfriend flat, then machine-gunned her head into a bloody pulp. This drove Prazza into a rage, and he began charging towards the mech, screaming and howling like a man possessed. Unfortunately for him, the YMIR had already readied its arm-mounted rocket launcher, and when Prazza burst forth from cover firing wildly, he instantly realised that a rocket was now screaming directly towards his face. Unfortunately, unless one's name is "Garrus Vakarian," rockets to the face tended to be fatal, and so Prazza went out in a blaze of stupidity, although no one who knew him would ever have called that an unexpected end.

Shepard and his henchman were now moving into the loading bay, right as Vrael and Skaal were charging the YMIR mech in a vain attempt to avenge Prazza. They were going in guns blazing, but it was all for naught, as their bullets were easily soaked up by the mech's shields.

"Oh _keelah,_ what a miscalculation this was!" were Vrael's last words before the YMIR ripped him and Skaal to shreds. The only member of Tali's crew the mech didn't kill was Juodaan. Instead, his liver failed mere moments before a burst of gunfire cut him down, which, in hindsight, was probably exactly the way he wanted to go.

Tali heard the distinctive _pop-pop-pop_ of a grenade launcher being fired, and when Tali peered out of cover she saw Shepard showering the YMIR mech with grenades. Seeing that the mech had its back turned to her, she stepped out of the habitat and began opening fire with her shotgun.

The mech's programming determined that Tali was now the greater threat, so it turned to face her. "_EXECUTE MODE: KILL"_ it bellowed in its mechanical baritone. But like the smaller LOKI mechs, its combat programming was limited, and it could do little except walk forward and fire. Combined with its slow movement, it was now being pounded from both sides, and soon they had blasted through its shields and armour. With surprising finesse, Tali drew her pistol and fired a single shot, which took off the mech's head.

She looked at the scene of carnage around her. All of her crew, except the two she had left at the ship, were now dead. It had all happened so fast. She may have found them unbearably incompetent, and they may have despised her completely, but for reasons beyond Tali's comprehension she felt terribly guilty about it. She should have stopped them from charging ahead. It was because of her lack of authority that they had gotten themselves killed, wasn't it?

"That was one tough son-of-a-bitch to take down," said the whorishly-dressed woman.

Just then they noticed that the "corpse" of the YMIR mech was making a strange sound. "Why is it making that beeping noise?" Shepard asked aloud.

"It's going to blow!" cried the dark-skinned man, and Tali wasn't about to debate it. The four of them scattered in all directions just seconds before the mech exploded with a thunderous boom, the shockwave throwing Tali to the ground. When the smoke cleared, a crater was all that remained of the YMIR mech.

"The mechs explode if their heads come off?" Tali exclaimed after she got back to her feet. "What sort of insane design is that?" In fact, this design flaw had resulted in many deaths due to people attempting to dismantle mechs for repair. The manufacturer, Hahne-Kedar, had already been slapped with numerous lawsuits for its unsafe products, although as of yet no recalls had been issued for the "mechs explode catastrophically after removal of head" problem.

* * *

As Tali suspected, Veetor had reprogrammed all the mechs in the colony to attack anyone who wasn't he. The young quarian was scared out of his wits, but he had managed to piece together surveillance footage of the colony during the attack, which revealed that it had been beset by strange aliens, the same ones who had lured Tali into an attack with a false distress signal nearly a year ago. Apparently they were called "Collectors" and they originated from somewhere beyond the Omega-4 relay, a mass relay that had never been mapped on account of the fact that no ship passing through it had ever returned.

The dark-skinned man (who Tali had just learned as named Jacob Taylor) and the whorishly-dressed woman (who was named Miranda Lawson, her full name being Miranda Dunning-Kruger Lawson) had wanted to take Veetor back to some Cerberus facility, but Shepard had immediately vetoed that option. Tali found it very reassuring that he was still in charge; the Shepard she knew would never accept Cerberus having any authority over him. Still, she didn't like him working for them, even though she knew he would never do so unless there was a good reason, and disappearing colonies were likely as good a reason as any.

"You know, you don't have to take Veetor and go," Shepard said. "You could come with me. Just like old times."

Oh how she wanted to! Fighting that YMIR was reminded her of the countless battles she had fought at Shepard's side during his hunt for Saren. But there was the Haestrom mission that the admiralty had given her, and seeing how her team was dead she was already in hot water with the the board.

"I wish I could, Shepard, but I have a mission of my own, and I...I can't put it aside, not even for you." She gave a tired sigh, thinking of how infuriated the admirals were going to be when she made her report. "They'll have my head when then learn my whole crew got themselves killed."

Shepard turned away. "I'm sorry about your crew, Tali. I guess it's partly my fault; I can't blame them for not wanting to trust Cerberus."

She shook her head. "Prazza was an idiot, and he and his men died for it."

"I still can't believe it was 'the' Prazza. There was a bounty of several thousand credits on his head. Apparently what he did in some dirty magazine drove people insane, and now the Citadel Council has declared him one of their most wanted."

Naturally, Tali was not exactly proud of having such a person on her team. "Well he's dead now."

There was a brief, awkward silence between them. "I guess it's time for me to go, then," Shepard said. "I wish you could come with me, Tali, but I understand if you don't want to be associated with Cerberus. Stay safe out there."

He was starting to walk away, and Tali had to fight the urge to follow him. But she had to put aside her personal desires, as strong as they may be. Still, seeing him walk away was more painful than she'd anticipated. Shepard was back from the dead, and never in her life could she have ever anticipated anything like that happening. How, exactly, had Cerberus done it? As far as Tali knew, there was no technology in existence capable of such a feat. That meant that resurrecting Shepard was an impossibility, which could only mean that the some universe-rending event had surely occurred the moment he was brought back to life.

Tali returned to the _Kamala Kohtalo,_ still wishing she could be going with Shepard. It didn't seem right, not joining him here, and she dreaded the thought of facing the admirals' wrath. Her two remaining crewmates were bringing the bodies of her crew aboard, many of which were in a rather gruesome state. She wondered if any of them had families that would mourn their passing. If they did, would they blame her for getting them killed? She didn't want to think about that.

But Shepard being alive gave her hope; more hope than she ever known since his "death." Tali had watched helplessly as the Council and the Alliance had completely ignored the Reaper threat, and now there was someone was going to do something about it. She didn't know her part in it all just yet, but Tali hoped that she would stand alongside Shepard when the time came. Whatever happened, it was sure to be more interesting, although whether that was an improvement on her situation was completely up in the air. But for now, at least, the universe had smiled on her.


	15. Epilogue

Epilogue

* * *

It did not shame Tali'Zorah to say that, when she first beheld the _Normandy SR-2, _she teared up a little.

She didn't care at first that it had built by Cerberus or crewed by them. When she first set foot on board she knew in her heart that it had the same spirit as theold _Normandy. _It even had Joker at the helm, just like old times. But this new ship wasn't like the old one, no, it was better. It was larger, faster, and more heavily armed, although there were a few places where improvements could be me made in engineering. To that end, Shepard had immediately assigned her to the position of Chief Engineer, which made her glad to be free of the burden of command. If her experiences over the past two years had taught her anything, it was that she was blatantly unsuited to positions of authority, a trait which her father would no doubt be greatly disappointed at.

And the crew of this _Normandy_ was even more amazing than the crew of the old one. Tali had never seen a crew made up of so many aliens before. There was her old "friend" Garrus of course, along with a drell assassin, a salarian scientist, an asari Justicar (a real one, this time), and a tank-grown krogan. Still, it wasn't quite the same, and she worried that the Cerberus crewmen might not have any respect for a non-human like her. The last thing she wanted was another crew that despised her. Yet, to her surprise, everyone acted very polite, and none of them seemed to possess the anti-alien attitude she expected from Cerberus crewmen. As she later learned, many of them, such as engineers Ken Donnelly and Gabriella Daniels, were actually formerly members of the Alliance who had joined Cerberus out of frustration with the Alliance's lack of action against the Reaper menace. Most of the Cerberus crewmembers didn't even know much about the organisation they worked for, at least nothing beyond the _Normandy_ _SR-2_ cell. Tali supposed that made sense, as it limited the information any Cerberus agent could give provide in the event he was apprehended.

One thing was bothering her, however, and that was how readily the fleet's admiralty board had agreed to allow her to serve on the _Normandy._ It was almost as if they _wanted_ to get rid of her. Most likely they figured that, if she were going to cause explosions, mayhem, and destruction, then better it be with Shepard than with the flotilla.

Then there were the surveillance devices that Cerberus had strewn about the ship. Shepard had instructed her to remove any she found and do with them whatever she wanted. Most she ended up destroying, although there were a few she hacked to transmit a continuously looping segment of video, making wagers on how long it would take Cerberus to figure out what she had done.

"Hey Tali," came Shepard's voice from behind. She spun around to see him standing there, dressed in some black piece of formal wear that Kasumi Goto had gotten him. Kasumi was some strange woman they had picked up at the Citadel, as if the _Normandy's_ crew weren't strange enough as it was.

"Shepard!" she said, her tone more excited than she expected. She was still struggling to process the events of the past few weeks. Her mission to Haestrom had been a disaster – once again nearly her whole crew had gotten killed, with only Kal'Reegar and a few others surviving. And unlike her old crew these had been good men and women, who had died for what? For information about stars ageing faster than they should? What were the admirals thinking, sending them into the middle of geth space? Maybe that was why they had not given her any reprimand or censure for the loss of her crew.

"Just checking in," he said. "I know it must be rather...uncomfortable...working with Cerberus and all that."

"I'm not working with Cerberus," she said. "I'm working with you. But...thanks for checking up on me. I've already got a few ideas for upgrades we could make."

"Glad to hear it. You know, we didn't really have much time to chat on Haestrom, did we? I was just wondering what you've been up to for the past two years. It sounds like a lot happened."

Tali stepped back. _"Keelah,_ Shepard...you really want to know?"

"Of course."

"Then...you'd better settle in," she said. "This is going to take a while..."


End file.
